Sunday Morning Live - September 5th

[Music] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah congratulations you're now awake you guys ready to worship the lord for real sincerely [Music] [Applause] [Music] broken [Music] you call me into the light you call my name and then my heart came alive your love is greater your love is stronger your love awakens your love is greater your love is stronger [Music] feel the darkness shaking all the dead are coming back to life [Music] you call me [Music] is awakens awakens me your love is greater your love is stronger your love awakens awakens [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you guys excited to be in the house of the lord it's good to be in the house and lord singing praises and uh just you know we we could come into this place and sometimes just not be in the right place right we're in here but our minds are out there we are focused on things that are plaguing us the darkness is all around us and we don't want to enter in in the same way that we would if things were going really well right but he is worthy no matter what our circumstances amen because the name of jesus is greatly to be praised and so we want to come into this place full of intention to glorify him to make much of him and to see him take center point we're not here to worship him just because it's worth it but because he is worthy of it amen amen [Music] peace [Music] jesus jesus you make the darkness from oh jesus jesus jesus you make the darkness jesus jesus [Music] call these bones to leave [Music] jesus you make the darkness jesus your silent fear jesus jesus as you make the darkness tremble jesus jesus [Music] jesus [Music] jesus [Music] jesus cannot be overcome is [Music] jesus jesus for you make the darkness jesus [Music] you make the darkness of jesus oh jesus [Music] [Music] the is can't deny or your name cannot be overcome or your name is alive forever lifted high yes your name cannot be overcome that the shadows came tonight [Music] foreign [Music] for jesus [Music] [Music] jesus so [Music] [Music] so [Music] you bring life to the dark you give home you restore every heart that is [Music] so we pour out our praise and pour out our praises your bread in our loves so we pour out our praise to you [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] in all of [Applause] [Music] our us [Music] [Applause] [Music] we pour out our praise to you [Music] all the earth all the earth will shout your feet our hearts will cry these bones will sink [Music] our hearts will cry these [Music] bones the earth will shout your way our hearts will cry these bones will is [Music] [Applause] is [Music] [Music] we're me [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's what we want to do we want to say great is the lord and greatly to be praised we want to really usher in an attitude of praise here this morning we we know that all creation declares the glory of god and so he doesn't need us to point out that he is great he doesn't need us to point out his glory but we can respond to it and we can turn our attention to it and away from like we just sang away from the darkness and then focus on the light and not just for our own sake but just to say you know you are glorified in this place and we want to set our hearts in your direction because you're worthy of praise and so i'm excited to do that here this morning excited to launch into a brand new book of the bible this morning the book of james which i'm excited to hear from pastor bob and then we're going to respond in in different ways we're going to worship through singing we're going to worship through opening the word and then we're going to worship through through giving and so we're going to do that now so if you're watching online or if you're in the room here there's a link that'll pop up on the bottom of the screen over there and that's where we facilitate giving through calvary chapel east anaheim and then we also have an app in the app store which you can get and it's useful in a couple ways you can give there yes but you can sign up for different things in there we have our kingdom hearts series that's starting this tuesday and so you have an opportunity to sign up for that if you want to get into a home group or if you want to host a home group it's a great way to really go deeper in your fellowship and to get some more bible in your life you know and do it in a small group setting and so you can sign up for that but also if you're new here you can let us know that you're new and we can get you connected you know we have newcomers dinners that happen all the time every few months in which all the pastors gather with new people and we eat a meal together and get to know each other because we don't want this to look like an audience to you we want it to feel like a family and so if you're new here please know you're welcome you're loved because christ loved you first and so we want to extend that love to you and we want to bring you into the fold because you're a part of an even greater family you're part of the family of god if your faith is in jesus and so we want you to experience all that god has to offer you here this morning so we're going to pray over our time together we're going to commit it to the lord and then we're going to continue to sing we're actually going to sing a song that was written right out of james chapter 1 to prepare our hearts to receive the word and so let's uh let's go before the lord lord we're thankful to be here we're grateful that you meet us here we pray that we would worship you not out of our circumstance but out of the fact that you are great and greatly to be praised lord you are worthy of our praise and so we want to do that with singing we want to do that as we posture our hearts in your direction hear from you and your word and then as we give as we serve as we love all the things that you call us to do when we gather we want to do it for your glory so we love you we pray in jesus name amen [Music] they're [Music] [Applause] [Music] when i look at the space between where i used to be [Music] alone there was another in that time [Music] [Applause] should i ever need [Music] there is another [Music] [Music] [Applause] should i fall in the space between no one raising me in this regular either way i will bow to the things of this world i know i will never be alone there is never in the fire standing next to me there is another [Applause] set me free there is a grave that holds no nobody now the power lives in me there is another [Music] oh there's another [Music] in the darkness as the darkness [Music] [Music] [Music] you're always with the sky there is no other name [Music] between all the things i know i will never be alone [Applause] i know [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] should i ever [Music] [Applause] cause i know that's where you'll be [Music] nothing says between us nothing between having [Music] [Applause] should [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i know that's where you'll be i'll [Music] cause i know that's where you'll be [Music] [Applause] the lord for those of us who are in a battle this morning lord before you would speak to us we pray that you would clear our hearts and our minds of anything that is not of you that we can focus on you so we love you in jesus name amen you guys can grab a seat and share me and my wife we decided to serve by serving in the four and five-year-olds in our children's ministry it has been such a blessing we serve once a month there's opportunities to serve once a week once every other week or once a month we decided once a month was good for us good for our schedule to help out in any way that we could and it's been such a blessing to serve your kids serve god's children and we just encourage you if you have one one week one weekend one one sunday a month we ask that you would join us in there it's such an awesome privilege to do so and these kids love us we love them we know them by name it's been such a blessing we hope you will get involved and serve in our children's ministry well amen that was my son valor if you don't know he does media at our church and we're the companies are hijacking the announcements today because this is my other son christian if you've never met him and he is married to our children's ministry director and he has an announcement that is on our hearts so yes yes so i have the privilege of representing our adventure kids ministry today and i just wanted to invite you guys so we have a fall season that's kicking off we are actually restarting our curriculum which is called the gospel project and what we do is we go through the entire bible but we look at the bible and we bring everything back at the end of the message to tie into the gospel we find jesus in the old testament but starting today we're actually starting in the creation today so our fall season is going to be about a 16 week season um it'll be pretty much end at christmas and what we're asking is if some of you would be willing to do even just once a month so you have to think about that if you decide to do once a month that means you'll serve four times between now and christmas if you're willing to do bi-weekly we like that even more the more time you can spend with the kids we feel the better what's on my heart really is um for all of you but particularly the men in this church what i've noticed is about nine out of ten of our volunteers are women and i think the par part of that just comes from you know what i'm not really comfortable with kids you know i think it's easy for us i don't think i would have ever served with our kids if my wife hadn't taken over the uh position in children's ministry and i think that would have been what i would have said you know it's just not a comfortable thing for me and kids well i want to remind you that god wants to use uncomfortable situations to use you for his glory so this just happened to me in my life recently i had the privilege of going up to our pastor's retreat and i'm not a pastor i got invited to come up for the day and i i was excited to just sit with the pastors and really just listen you know as as they shared from the bible and they shared about things that are going on in the ministry and and just to be there to take away and you know i ended up sharing a few words when i felt led and after one of the sessions josh trotter our youth pastor he came up to me and he said hey bro would you come up to the youth next month and would you share your testimony and i thought inside i was screaming no no no but of course what did i say sure josh i'd love to i knew what that meant i knew that that would mean i not only had to get up in front of people for a couple minutes like i'm doing now but i'd have to get up and i'd have to be up there for like 20 25 minutes and i was terrified but i also knew of josh was asking me that god was leading that and i decided to do it and so last week i had the privilege of sharing my testimony up with our youth and god used even me you guys at the end of second service josh said hey why don't you do why don't you give the kids a chance to make a decision for the lord after this message and i did and uh six six hands went up six little hands and um there was one girl in particular and i just saw her as as god was working in her heart and she was in tears and i i was just moving and i thought man how awesome it is that even though i'm completely uncomfortable i don't necessarily want to do it if you step out in faith and do something god's going to use it and then he's going to encourage your heart to say look i can use even you so men women too but men i encourage you to step up these kids need godly men in their lives part of my part of what i shared with you youth last week is is when we give our life to the lord it says in the bible that we receive the holy spirit and how do we know that we receive the holy spirit while we get the fruit of the spirit and fruit are produced to be eaten to be taken so men of this church that are born again believers that have the holy spirit we need you planted in with our kids where those kids can see and take the fruit that god's given you the love the joy the peace the patience we can preach the bible and tell them about jesus every week but when they see it lived out in your life as you serve even uncomfortably it's going to make an impact so i sent our tech team a qr code like last minute oh they are awesome i'm going to give you 30 seconds right now please take some time pull out your phone pointed out that thing if you've never done this most of us have done this now with covid but um this is the menu for the cafe no i'm just kidding no no it's a it's a quick quick form it's going to take you 15 seconds to fill it out it's just going to say hey i'm interested here's the position i'm interested this doesn't mean you're going to be teaching the kids every week we've got teachers if you want to teach there's opportunities for that but we really just need people to be in there loving and watching over the kids thank you so much for your time you guys god bless you love you [Applause] thank you christian you know we talk about serving and for many of you you're involved we're thankful for that but for many others that's your next step you know we talk about coming on wednesday night yes to study the old testament for more fellowship but maybe you're coming on wednesday night or maybe you can't you're involved in a home bible study great but it is time to serve you will not grow to your maturity potential as a christian until you start to serve it's part of what god intends for your ability to grow we need an army of people in there and we would love you to be part of it's an exciting time of what god's gonna do please take advantage of that find out more information and if you can start serving on sunday mornings we have several other things going on we want you to know about our school of discipleship is starting on september 12th that's next sunday so that's eight week classes we've been talking about it but now it's time i feel like in a lot of ways a lot of our announcements today are it's time it's time to make a decision and if you want to take one of the classes on sunday or with don stewart on monday it's time to make sure you sign up so you can get your book in time but please you can find that also on our app check out the title see what you're interested in and then we've been talking about it so i won't take too much time with this but if you know somebody or you are somebody who struggles with either sexual addiction or sexual uh issues in your life maybe it's not an addiction it's just maybe it's harm from the past or difficulty in your present life in terms of your sexuality and you want to commit that to the lord you want healing for that or direction or wisdom we have a special ministry called cross current and it's an eight-week program for men and women and it's starting up uh here in just on september 9th so you need to sign up that's also in the app read more about it and i think it's going to be a blessing i know this is a very sensitive area it's very difficult i'm always reminded that god had his people signify the men anyway in the old testament that they were his through circumcision you couldn't get a more private area of your life but god says i want you to be different in your sexuality i want it to affect every aspect of your life and as christians we really want the lord's purity and healing and holiness in our lives at every area so men and women take advantage of that don't be afraid of that and if you have questions ben will be in the foyer ben gunder to answer questions he oversees that ministry and then of course our cross current conference is coming up that's just a one day or on september 11th so that's uh next saturday and you're going to want to be a part of this it's free but it's going to be an incredible time so if you know somebody that would be blessed or encouraged i know joe dallas will be speaking it's going to be an amazing time don't miss it and then i just want to say a couple of brief words you may have noticed we have put out some flags and some photographs of the marines we thought it would be honoring to the lord to remember those who have died for our freedom just recently especially this week of 9 11 as we're getting closer to that so i'd ask you to please maybe you've never got up close to the pictures to even know what they look like maybe before you leave you just mentally come through and offer up a prayer for those families that have had such a great loss i'd appreciate it and and continue to pray for the americans the christians and our allied afghani friends who are still in afghanistan this is still a great need of the hour so i encourage you to do that also if you have not voted in the recall folks this is something we believe really important in our church when we have as citizens an opportunity to express our voice that we take the time to figure out what the lord would have us to do with that so if you want the governor to stay in place then then do nothing or do the recall and say i don't want him to be recalled if you feel like he should be taken out of that office and given to another this is what it's about there really it's not a hard ballot to figure out you you have a yes or a no and then if you say yes i want to recall you have 36 other people to consider so you can pray through that and obviously a lot of conservatives it is a unique opportunity for conservatives to try to replace a democratic governor in a very liberal state you'll probably never see this the rest of your life if it happens the possibilities are amazing in terms of what might happen if a conservative is placed in the position of governor he may well or she may well have the opportunity of appointing a republican senator dianne feinstein is 88 years old she is perhaps not going to she may retire or not fulfill her term as a result of that if a conservative is placed in the governorship it's his authority and right and responsibility to appoint a governor and a senator and of course they'll appoint a conservative why is that important well if you're watching politics you know the balance of power in this country right now is basically 50 50 in the senate with the thai vote being cast by a democratic vice president the majority is actually on that side of things if a senator is you can follow my logic here if a senator is replaced who's conservative that all changes at a national level this is not a small thing so it's important that you pray through whether or not you go well bob i've been watching the the polls and we're not sure now that he can even be recalled it's not about that it's not about you like you lose what did what did that uh hockey player say i missed 100 of the shots i never took well you miss obedience and 100 of the the votes you never take okay your faithfulness is showing up and just expressing your view that's what god wants you to do so trust the lord with duty is ours results are god so please take advantage of that one more thing if you didn't hear about it we want to praise god this just came out this week the courts have decided that uh the government needs to pay to churches like john mcarthur's church 800 000 for legal fees and penalties for government overreach for shutting the church down so we say thank you lord for that amen amen all right i do have a message i want to give it wasn't that so let's have you open your bibles to the new book james chapter 1. we said that the theme of hebrews was the superiority the supremacy of christ he's better than everything else the theme of the book of james would simply be two words faith works faith works but let's look at what james wrote beginning in verse one of chapter one james a bond servant of god and a bond servant of the lord jesus christ to the 12 tribes who are dispersed abroad greetings here's the first thing he wants to say to us consider it all joy my brethren when you encounter various trials knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance let endurance have its perfect result that you may be perfect complete lacking in nothing but if any of you lacks wisdom that's like all of us in the room biblically let him ask of god who gives to all men generously and without reproach and it will be given to him but we must ask in faith without any doubting for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind for that man ought not to expect he'll receive anything from the lord being double-minded unstable in all our ways father would you now help us as a church to get ready for the lessons you're about to give us today in the next few weeks about how to live out our faith lord we have seen in the book of hebrews the basis of faith and thank you for the great deep theology of christ being our great high priest being better than the temple better than the angels better than the prophets better than every other voice you've ever spoken thank you that you've finished the work of redemption and he has sat down at the right hand of the father and ever lives to make intercession for us and he's coming back for us lord we understand we believe that but now lord we want our faith to do works in our life now we wanted to be seen and shown and demonstrated and we wanted to grow so we commit our study of this book and of this particular passage to you be among us and speak to us in a powerful way for we ask it in jesus name and all god's people said praise the lord would you have a seat the new testament book of proverbs is what james has been called because there are some themes that we will see like today talking about trials but throughout the book he's going to change subjects say change topics quite often kind of like any time you've read the book of proverbs you he just moves from topic to topic with god's wisdom how do i live out a fear of god in this life well that's what the book of james is all about the word faith is mentioned 12 times in this short little book by the way that's more than any other new testament epistle and we're going to talk about how faith works itself out practically the fact is just because you become a christian does not mean everything goes right in your life or that you make good decisions or that the laws of nature or gravity or for that matter murphy's law you know doesn't apply to your life listen this guy he wrote a friend of mine awoke one morning to find a puddle of water in the middle of his king-size waterbed in order to fix the puncture he rolled the heavy mattress outdoors filled it with more water so he could locate the leak more easily the enormous bag of water was impossible to control and it began rolling on the hilly terrain he tried to hold it back but it headed downhill and landed in a clump of bushes which poked it full of holes disgusted my friend threw out the water bed frame moved a standard bed into his room the next morning he awoke to find a puddle of water in the middle of the new bed the upstairs bathroom had a leaky drain yeah you ever have days like that just because you're born again just because you're a christian just just because you're a believer doesn't mean you don't get sick doesn't mean you don't have car accidents or you can't lose your job or you might not have trouble in your marriage or with your kids or that a loved one might not die during your lifetime or that old age is not going to be hard for you to navigate all those things here's what the bible says in first corinthians 10 13 we'll use this first later in the message but it's an important one to this study there in first corinthians 10 13 paul says this no temptation but the greek word for temptation is our same word for test or trial no temptation no trial no test has overtaken you but such as is what are those next three words common to man now i used to not like that because it kind of was saying hey you're not going through nothing that anybody else has already gone through you know i felt like god was saying you know stop crying like a baby that's not what he was saying the fact is we as believers still go through trials and tests and hard things that everybody else does too we don't get to escape those things but how does my faith look under fire how do i do during those times it's an important reality that the trials we go through really reveal the reality or the lack of reality of our faith put this down let your faith form first of all your self-perception put in the word perception it's interesting to me this book begins by this introduction not too uncommon but nonetheless worth pointing out james calls himself a bond servant of god and a bondservant of the lord jesus christ and i think that designation that perception of himself has everything to do with the ability to do what he's about to command us to do he doesn't call himself a saint although he was a saint he calls himself a servant you know when it comes to our relationship with god many times we struggle right at the beginning point of ever even praying talking to the lord the way he would want us to jesus said when you pray pray like this what were the words that he said we should say our father who art in heaven those two words or those two expressions god is our heavenly father he's our father in heaven refer to two aspects of our relationship to god one that he has affection for us we assume because he's our father before i even get to the in heaven which has to do with authority over everything that's going on in my life in other words the authority i know he can change he can do anything he wants but first i need to realize he cares about me he loves me he wants to hear from me if we really don't believe that we're going to struggle our own perception of ourselves last night i was with my grandson he's four and a half and he wanted me to stay uh and be with him longer but we wanted to go home and get some sleep and so i said you know we're going to go home he said don't know stay longer and i said well you know i want to go home and have a cup of coffee he goes well my dad has coffee i said yeah but he's got the wrong kind i like dunkin donuts or whatever he has i think that and uh and i said besides i have my special cup at home and he goes we've got a cup with a picture of me on it in his mind he knew that his grandfather would rather drink coffee out of a cup with a picture of him on it than any other cup i might have at home because he knows i love him he knows i like to think of it he's right when you pray do you see yourself as a child of god who god cannot wait to hear from affection and authority he is in the heavens he does whatever he pleases but here james sees himself not only as a child of god but it's important that you see it as a bond servant of god a bond servant of god remember the concept of a doulas that's the greek word it comes from the verb deo which means to be bound or to bind a doulas is a servant but it's not just any kind of a servant that's not just a slave in the traditional sense that we know of in our own nation's history or for that matter in world history there were so many slaves that were just property in the ancient world in the roman empire but this word refers to a kind of servant that is unique god gave laws that after seven years every person that was purchased because jews would get so poor they'd have to sell themselves they could not be kept in bondage they must be released both at the year of jubilee and after that seven years they had to be released that's the longest you could be forced to be owned but there was an asterisk on that god said i want you to treat your slaves so well that this might happen so he gave instructions that at the end of that time although they are going to be released and you'd expect everybody to want to be released they can say you know what i thought about it i frankly am so loved by my master i do not want my freedom i want to surrender the rest of my life and voluntarily i'm giving myself to the master and you became what the bible called a bond servant one who voluntarily because they're so loved said i want to stay and serve you the rest of my life that's the word that james uses here put this down humble yourself if you want to be able to have joy in your circumstances in the lord you're going to have to start with the way you see yourself listen to this christian herder he was the governor of massachusetts at the time he was running for a second term in office one day after a busy morning chasing votes and hadn't had lunch he arrived at a church barbecue it was late afternoon and he was starving and heard her moved down the serving line he held out his plate to a woman who was serving chicken she put a piece of chicken on his plate and turned to the next person in line excuse me governor herder said do you mind if i have another piece of chicken sorry the woman told them i'm supposed to give one piece of chicken to each person but i'm starved the governor said sorry the woman said only one to a customer governor herder was a modest and unassuming man but he decided this time he would throw a little weight around do you know who i am he said i'm the governor of the state do you know who i am the woman said i'm the lady in charge of that chicken mister move on yeah we're not all that james could have said because it was true i'm the brother of jesus christ because he was humanly the actual brother if you will half-brother of jesus christ but he never mentions that instead he only mentions that he is a bond servant jot down john 15 15. this is fascinating to me what jesus said to his disciples no longer do i call you slaves or servants for the slave does not know what his master is doing but i have called you friends for all things that i have heard from my father i have made known to you peter james and john the other james were in that group where jesus said i don't call you slaves any longer i'm just calling you friends from now on well that's quite a graduation from slave or servant to to friend but it's interesting if you go through the new testament you'll find that peter this james and john all chose to refer to themselves as bond servants of jesus christ as does paul in other words jesus says i won't call you that but these guys say that's what i want to be known as i'm a bond servant of jesus it's important that we start there because if you don't see yourself as a bond servant why is this important because a bond servant doesn't have a will of their own you say what no a bond servant doesn't wake up in the morning going i wonder what i want to do today where do i want to go no no a bond servant has released their will to the will of the master what the master wants me to do that is my will they're one and the same and if you struggle right there you're going to struggle with ever fighting the rest of this truth in this passage work it begins with consecration of your life lord i'm saved i'm going to heaven but from now on your will is my will i don't even know what your will is yet but i've already decided let me just say this sometimes christians are struggling with knowing the will of god if you want to know the will of god do the will of god you say well that's kind of ridiculous no if you want to know the unknown will of god do the known will of god do what you know you will know what to do that's romans 12 first couple of verses paul says as i urge you therefore brethren by the mercies of god present your bodies a living and a holy sacrifice to god that's consecration which is your spiritual service of worship don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind in order that you may discern know or prove it says the will of god that which is good acceptable and perfect in other words if i want to know the will of god that i don't know it starts with doing the will of god which is giving myself totally sold out and surrendered it begins there and maybe for some of us in this room that's all you need to hear today because everything else is going to fall a follow that have you completely surrendered your life to christ at first if you come to christ and then secondly have you said from now on lord i am going to resign myself to accept your will so i'm not praying oh god please my will be done on earth which is our temptation all the time many of our prayers it's just that god solve this fix this let me tell you how but to say thy will be done lord that's my will from now on well put in the second fill-in if you would the word is problems let your faith flourish in spite of your problems in verse 2 of our text consider it all joy my brethren when you encounter various trials now to be honest with you our flesh says that's just weird when problems increase to be joyful doesn't make sense let me help unpack this a little bit i hope for us first of all put this down see joy is a choice based on personal consideration in our text it says consider it all joy now that is not a word that has anything to do with feelings the word consider means to deem something to decide that it is it's a decision that you can make and he says when you fall into king james when you encounter various trials the greek word here is pipto perry is a preposition which means all around you and pipto means to fall and that's why king james says when you fall into a variety of the ideas you have suddenly found yourself in circumstances that are all around you you're surrounded by them you didn't know how you got there and you're terrified okay that's the idea up to our ears and alligators we used to say when i was a police officer joy is not a feeling based on circumstances it's a reason reaction based on facts let me say that again the joy that we're commanded to have is not based on feelings and circumstances but our reason reaction based on facts how do i know that remember what paul said to the philippians rejoice in the lord don't leave that part out rejoice in the lord always and again i'll say rejoice that's interesting paul practiced what he preached when paul was in their jail when he first went to philippi remember second missionary journey acts 16 he's thrown into the prison and what did paul and silas do as they were beaten at midnight they started to sing and praise and give thanksgiving they rejoiced now i don't know what song they sang i kind of wonder sometimes rejoicing lord always and again i say rejoice rage yeah see they maybe they did that right they get everybody's listening okay everybody you know just like just the felons this time i don't know but they they were praising the lord and they stuck out like a sore thumb but it was intriguing to everybody like what's with those guys that is weird that is strange but it was real joy they made a decision not based on their circumstances but based on facts you know paul never calls himself the prisoner of rome he's taken as a prisoner to rome and by the way he also said there in rome i'm rejoicing in the lord god has a plan for me here i have opened up new doors for ministry right here the whole praetorian guard has heard this this is turned out he he only saw the blessings wherever god put him you know why because he knew the lord was in charge rejoice in the hakurias the lord the lordship of christ that is what you can always rejoice in not your circumstances necessary don't see any value of those don't like those they're not pleasant they're not good there's no joy in the pain but there's joy in the one who is in charge of your life he doesn't say rejoice in your losses he says rejoice in the lord see when we struggle with that here's the real problem it has to do with faith we have forgotten that our savior is the ceo of the universe and when we forget that we're gonna struggle jot down first chronicles 29 11. what a great prayer this is this is at david's prayer at the dedication he said thine o lord is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth thine is the dominion the rule o lord and thou just exalt thyself as head over all how do i rejoice in the lord when my circumstances are bad i remember that god is good and god is governing isaiah the year king uzziah dies the national throne of israel is empty uh oh that's a dangerous time ah but i see the lord highly lifted up sitting on the throne the throne in heaven is still occupied john is on the island of patmos he wants to be with believers he may die out there but what does he see go read revelation he sees the first thing he sees when the lord says come up here he sees a throne in heaven and by the way it's very occupied the lamb is on the throne and that's what you and i need to remember that gives us the ability to say lord i trust you right now even though i don't get this i know that you're in charge put this down trust your trials are divinely designed to fit you to fit you in verse 3 after he's told us to consider it joy he says knowing so this is important this is the basis of being able to do it that the testing notice you might want to underline the word your the testing not of faith but of your faith produces endurance it's not the testing of faith generally it's the testing of your faith particularly see here's the truth faith if it's strong chooses to see now what the flesh may only see in the rear view mirror later what do i mean by that we can look back on our lives and see the hand of god in our lives but at the time that it's happening we didn't see it but strong faith sees now that god is at work god is in charge and that my disappointments are actually his appointments even though i don't understand it so joseph and mary they're pregnant misunderstood by people around them suddenly find out we've got to move in the final time of our pregnancy we've got to go 100 mile journey because some king somewhere wants to count the people and pay taxes this is a diff it was already difficult people were already not understanding how she's pregnant out of wedlock and why joseph isn't divorcing her like he should i mean it was already a mess to everybody else but they're honoring god and now in addition to that things get worse and they don't know and they don't understand but you know because you've read micah 5 but thou bethleh rather though thou be too little among the clans of judah yet one shall come forth from you whose goings forth are from eternity to be king the messiah has to be born not in nazareth but in bethlehem well how are we going to get them there oh we'll just have a king count the people and tax the people see that's the only way for the god's dream for their lives comes true is to put them where he wants them and he'll use pressure to get you there you need to see when god is doing things that he didn't ask your permission for that you didn't see coming that you suddenly fallen into circumstances he's on the throne and he's moving things right into place go study in the book of genesis the life of joseph my goodness it's almost like a job before we read the book of job everything i mean he is loved by his father but not by his brothers they hate his guts because he's so loved they sell him out they literally would have killed him but hey we might as well make a shekel off the guy so we'll sell them sell them as a slave into egypt bye not gonna miss you at all we'll tell dad you got eaten up by an animal he'll believe it and for years joseph can you imagine how you could would have felt separated from your father who loves you separated from your brothers maybe that wouldn't been too bad at that point but you you're in a foreign land people worship a foreign god bad enough you get sold into slavery then you're falsely accused by potiphar's wife of doing something you didn't do thrown into prison you had done nothing wrong joseph is an old testament type of christ he had done nothing wrong but he's falsely accused repeatedly but god's going to vindicate him just as he vindicated christ remember the two friends in prison who he has a prophecy says god's going to restore you back to your offices and when when you do remember me it almost sounds like the thief on the cross remember me you know and they say okay we will they get restored well one of them does and the other one gets executed but the fact is the one who gets restored completely forgets about joseph and he's left alone in the prison until pharaoh has those dreams and then suddenly he goes from the prison to the palace within a day and he's exalted and he's at the right hand of the king you see he is amazed all of god's plans for him what was it that god was fulfilling the dreams those dreams that he had given to him when he was a young boy your brothers are going to someday bow down to you how's that ever going to happen doesn't look like that's ever going to happen oh it's all going to happen can i tell you something god is at work to make a dream come true his plan for you his will for you come true but it's going to take a course that you don't see you can't understand but you can choose to say god's on the throne he's getting me right where i need to be so he can fulfill his will in my life and those difficulties that he allows into my life are exactly designed for me now first corinthians 10 13 let's look at it no trial no temptation has overtaken you but such as is coming to man and here it is god is faithful he will not allow you to be tried or tempted beyond what you are able but with the test with the trial with the temptation he'll provide the way of escape also that you might be able to endure it what does that mean well among other things it means this that you need to know whenever you're facing a difficulty something has changed in your life it seems overwhelming that god is making a statement about your faith he is saying you're ready for this you might go he's wrong well i think god knows you better than you know you like that little boy that was carrying in that big load of wood and the neighbor said hey that's too heavy for you son he said no no my dad loaded me up he knows what i can take that's exactly right your father knows what you can take and maybe you've never faced this before but he's gotten you ready jotted down genesis 22 and verse 1. now it came about after these things god tested abraham and he said to him abraham and he said here i am this verse is the lead-in to the greatest test of abraham's life for god is going to say to abram take your son your only son the one you were waiting and hoping for that you thought would never happen but i gave him to you isaac take now your son your only son take him up to the mountain that i'll show you up here on mount moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering abraham doesn't say uh what was that how can that be i thought my seed would be numbered through either that doesn't make sense i don't like the idea i don't think he'll like it i think child protective services would like i i don't there's nothing about this is good he just says yes lord i'll do it now we all go how could anybody ever be obedient when god says to do something like that child sacrifice god would never say that here's the part of the verse that is so crucial can we put genesis 22 1 back on the on the screen it came about notice this next phrase after these things you say what are these things uh that would be everything since abram had first met the lord back in aura of the chaldeas and god said leave your land leave your family and come to the land that i'll show you after these things is every trial every test that abram had ever experienced in his whole life as a believer remember he didn't do really great at the beginning leave your land leave your family behind okay i'm going with my dad and my nephew lot that was like not quite obedience doesn't even make it to kanan he hangs out with dad till dad dies i mean he's just really a new believer struggling with living out his faith like a lot of us he doesn't completely obey the lord he sort of partially obeys and partially compromises and he remember goes through a famine and so what does he do he goes down to what i call costco the ancient costco because there's no bread in the land so it cut costco has everything he goes down to egypt he doesn't even ask the lord for bread he just i know what to do with this situation i'll handle it myself goes down to egypt he gets bread but he gets into a lot of trouble lying about his wife picks up hagar along the way she'll have a future problem with him remember this is an interesting story but he is struggling with expressing faith in god all the way along but he's learning slowly over years and decades he's learning that god is faithful and if he tells me to do something he will he has reasons i don't understand it came about after these things let me just tell you when he puts you into a test you've got to hear genesis 2 1 in your own soul he's got you ready for this it might seem overwhelming to you i'm sure that it did in genesis 22 1 but he was ready and he passed the test god is not going to give you a test that he doesn't ready you for some of us in school were given tests that we weren't ready for now some of that was because we didn't study he had nothing to do with the teacher or the instruction it had to do with the student but the test that god gives you he has made you ready for he will never test you out of your weight class he'll never give you a child mom and dad that is too difficult for you to raise you say he won't you may not have a clue how to do it yet but if you'll take his resources and trust his promise he has gotten you and he will get you ready to do exactly what he's called you to do he won't give you a marriage that is too difficult for you to believe you could ever be happy or fulfilled in or your spouse will be content in or that he can't heal he'll he'll never give you a job that's too hard for you he won't he is preparing you for the next trial put this down our trials are preparatory and purposeful preparatory and purposeful knowing that the testing of your faith it produces endurance it's not just he's gotten me ready and i can get through with a c-plus oh no you're not going to just pass the test the test actually is preparing you for something more in your faith i love what chuck smith said in his autobiography everything in my life as he looked back on his whole everything is preparation for something else everything that god did everything that god allowed was preparation for something else even all of my failures 17 years he said to the ministry every failure which was horrible but it prepared me for what god was yet to do in my life jot down first peter 4 verses 12 and 13 beloved peter says don't be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you which comes upon you for your testing as though some strange thing were happening to you but to the degree that you share the sufferings of christ keep on rejoicing so that also at the revelation of his glory you may rejoice with exaltation and then muslims feel like when i get to heaven when it's all over then i can rejoice right now it's miserable no peter says you need to rejoice right now in fact if you want to rejoice then learn to rejoice right now god uses suffering we know this in the bible second corinthians 1 he uses suffering in our life to equip us in other words you go through things and by the way you don't just go through them for you now frankly i'm pretty self-centered so my god what are you doing for me you know well he puts me through trials he puts me through suffering and losses in order that he might use me in other people's lives have you ever thought about that the things you're going through are not just for you to learn that god is good and god is governing it's to give you the ability to minister to somebody else and when you go through something you've never been through before god is equipping you now to say to somebody else god's faithful he can help you with this i know i had that go on in my life it's not that we want to be all about ourselves we don't like it when you tell somebody yeah i'm not feeling very good what do you have well i have the flu i had the flu once yeah yeah it wasn't that bad you know it's not so that we can say to somebody yeah it's nothing it's rather to have compassion you know i was in an accident years ago where it was a head-on collision someone blew a light and we ran into them and i i thought my foot was broken in little pieces it turned out it was a soft tissue injury which unfortunately took a year to heal and i was on crutches for most of that time and i remember thinking to myself how miserable not the foot injury was the crutches the stupid crutches hurt more than the foot and so whenever i would see somebody come in on crutches i would run over them this is after i got better i didn't go you know i'm running on my crutches but i would go over to them and say how how you do it under here yeah excuse me who are you anyway i just i could tell i when you have gone through something you know in a way that you didn't before and you can have compassion on other people that's what the scriptures teach us that god comforts us in every affliction we have that we might be able to comfort others who are going through what we're going through god uses suffering and testing to equip us jot down deuteronomy 8 and verse 2. here's what god said deuteronomy second law that's what deuteros animas means the second giving the rehearsal of the law by moses before he dies you shall remember all the way which the lord your god has led you in the wilderness these forty years that he might humble you testing you to know what was in your heart whether you would keep his commandments or not i don't even know if i gave you that first fill in under letter a it's humble yourself but here the same idea moses says god gave tests in order to humble you to see what was in your heart now god knows your heart that's why i pray search my heart oh god i think i'm good but doesn't mean that i'm good you are my spiritual cardiologist you know the the state of my heart i really don't but god is saying i'm testing you to see what's in your heart but actually god already sees it it's not that him that he's not he's the one that needs to see what's in your heart you need to see what's in your heart and tests bring out of your heart what's going on so god brings us people out of egypt and he allows them to get thirsty in the wilderness and they're like would you bring us out of your moses or we could just die of thirst this is ridiculous and god's just watching to see what they'll do and then he brings them some water yay water and it's completely undrinkable remember that it was brackish it was salt waters like hey see what you'll do that's that's where god brought them tomorrow and tested his people what will you do when things aren't working out the way you expect and the way you want and when things actually get worse rather than better what will you do god brought his people to mount sinai here's the god that saved you except the mountain is shaking there's fire and there's don't touch the mountain or you'll die it's like and they're freaking out god says i tested you at mount sinai i wanted to reveal myself to see what is in your heart you see often god is bringing tests on us the bible says over and over to test our faith that is to show our faith think about having a hose in your backyard with a nozzle on it and it looks pretty good the hose looks good but you turn on the pressure and if there's a leak in that hose when you turn on the pressure that's when the leak shows up under pressure the leaks show the condition of the hose show so it is true with me and you the pressure did not create the leak it reveals a leak we usually talk about this going to get coffee in the morning you go down in starbucks or wherever you go you get your cup of coffee you put in your cup holder and you're late for work so you go over the speed bump a little too fast and your coffee displays itself on your headliner did the bump create the coffee nope it displayed the coffee the trials the bumps they don't create the problem they reveal the reality of where we're at that's what the lord says he is using trials to test our faith it's interesting in the gospels we have two accounts of parents who are concerned about their children that fascinate me because they actually are gentiles there's one of a centurion who comes to jesus for healing and also a syrophoenician woman and in both cases when these parents who are at their wits and bring their child's need to jesus because they believe so strongly jesus commands their faith great is your faith i haven't seen such great faith in all of israel and they're gentiles but there's another occasion where a father brings his son who's demon-possessed to jesus but jesus is up on a mountain praying with peter james and john and so the disciples who have cast demons out try to cast the demon out of the little boy who since he was a little tiny boy he had self-destructive tendencies would throw himself into the fire throw himself into the water it was like satan wanted to kill him and this father was desperate that his kid was going to die maybe some of you have a child that's out of control and drug you feel like they're going to die that's how this father fell last resort i got to get him to jesus and jesus's disciples are trying to cast the demon out of the boy and it won't come out and then jesus shows up coming down the mountain and they said we don't know what to do and the father says i brought him to your guys they couldn't help and you remember what jesus does he cast the demon out of the boy and he said this kind only comes out through prayer very interesting to me that we have this awareness when the disciples come to jesus and say why couldn't we cast out the demon he said because of the littleness of your faith for the syrophoenician woman who he speaks a word and the demon is cast out he says great is your faith woman it's interesting it's the same set of circumstances a demon-possessed child but in one case nothing can happen because of the littleness of faith of the one who wants to cast the demon out in the other case it's cast out immediately because of the greatness of your faith i don't know if you've heard this poem it's a great one by ella wheeler wilcox wrote it about a hundred years ago she said this one ship sails east and one sails west by the self same wind that blows for it's the set of the sails and not the gales that determine which way we go like the winds of the sea are the waves of time as we journey along through life tis the set of the soul that determines the goal and not the calm or the strife in other words it's not the trial or the storm you're in it really has to do with your mindset your faith set or lack thereof which will determine the ultimate outcome i think wheeler nailed it poetically 100 years ago james describes it perfectly but it's our chance and our turn to live it out practically and victoriously to say lord i believe your word is true jot down first peter chapter 1 verses 6 and 7. peter said this in these trials you greatly rejoice even though for a little while if necessary you have been distressed by various trials that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold which is perishable even though tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of jesus christ it's important that you see what god says about trials is that they are like the fire that would be used to test precious metals fire to a say heat to a say the reality the genuineness of a metal in the same way the trials are going to reveal is my faith real or not is it mature or is it immature jot down job 23 and verse 10 he says the same thing going through his trials he knows the lord knows the way that i take when he has tried me i shall come forth as what gold god looks at you and he says i'm going for the gold and sometimes you go i'll just take bronze you know the fact is lord i'm not doing you are going to be not only defined by faith but your faith is going to be refined i've been listening to a song lately it's been ministering to me because i think this song is a sermon i just want to read the word it's called blessings the gal says we pray for blessings we pray for peace comfort for family protection while we sleep we pray for healing for prosperity we pray for your mighty hand to ease our suffering but all the while you hear each spoken need yet love is way too much to give us lesser things because what if your blessings come through raindrops what if your healing comes through tears what if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know you're near what are trials of this life are your mercies in disguise we pray for wisdom your voice to hear we cry in anger when we can't feel you near we doubt your goodness we doubt your love and if every promise as if every promise from your word is not enough all the while you hear each desperate plea and long that we'd have faith to just believe when friends betray us when darkness seems to win we know that pain reminds this heart that this is not our home what if my greatest disappointments or the aching of this life is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy what if trials of this life the rain the storms the hardest nights are your mercies in disguise well i don't think it's what if i think it's the reality god uses difficult times to show us that his promises are true that we can depend on him and to challenge us to grow in our faith put this down we need not understand to stand under our trials there in verse 4 take a look at the goal of the trial he says this let endurance have its perfect result in verse three your faith produces endurance it's purposeful let endurance have its perfect result that you may be perfect complete and lacking in nothing i don't know if you noticed it but when jesus spoke to his disciples in john 15 15 he says this no longer do i call you bond servants i'll call you friends but he describes the bond servant there it's very interesting no longer do i call you servants for the servant does not know what his master is doing in other words the servant does not have a calendar where the master gives the servant everything he's planning to do today and why he's doing it that's not the prerogative of a servant to know what the master is doing so when you call yourself a servant of god you're not only resigning yourself to do his will you're resigning yourself to the fact that i don't know his will i don't know what my master is doing but i'm okay with that because i trust him i love him so it i don't need to know what god is doing you don't need to understand what god is doing to stand under your trial and by the way the reason i use that phrase is because the word endurance in the greek it's a great word sorry i'm giving so much greek to you today i know you don't always want that but is the greek word hoopa meno hoopa is the word for under we get the word like hypodermic dermis skin hypo is it's where the deal goes under your skin hoopa meno means literally to remain to live to dwell or abide but it's also translated in roman zion to stand in other words the way god wants to work through trials is to help us to stand under whatever he allows even when we don't understand what he's doing we still know why he is allowing it that's important spurgeon had a plaque on his wall charles had in spurgeon of his bedroom with isaiah 48 10 on it it read like this god speaking i have chosen thee speaking to israel and to you and me really i have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction and he wrote this it is no mean thing no small thing to be chosen of god god's choice makes chosen men choice men we are chosen not in the palace but in the furnace in the furnace beauty is marred fashioned destroyed strength melted glory consumed yet here eternal love reveals its secrets and declares its choice someone has put it this way a clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot it has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain see if you think about it a diamond is just a chunk a lump of coal that stayed on the job that's what god's calling you to do to let the time of his stress pressure and problems that he allowed trials in your life to accomplish that work of causing you to believe god rejoice in his lordship and to watch him be faithful in your life put this down let your faith reveal itself in your prayers the first thing is i need to see myself as a bond servant god that's where it begins you're in charge i don't understand what you're doing but i trust you secondly then i need to realize that i can have joy in the midst because you're doing them on purpose you're allowing this there's a reason for it i don't always understand what the reason is but i trust the reasoner put this down make prayer your first response not your last resort look at verse 5 but if any of you lacks wisdom he's talking in context not just generally but about trials meaning you don't know what's going on it just seems like these things have changed suddenly and you love the lord and you don't understand why he's allowing it but if any of you lacks wisdom here it is let him ask of god that's prayer and then it describes the kind of god that you're praying to he gives to all generously and without reproach just like a father gives to his child doesn't upbraid him and it will be given to him this is the promise of god and you know there are over 30 illusions echoes of the ministry and the words of jesus in the book of james this is one of the first ones because we just studied it ask and it will be given jesus said ask and keep asking that's exactly what james is repeating here you need to ask god you need to talk to god so make prayer your first response not your last resort look it's natural for us as people i think particularly for men but maybe all people when somebody comes to me i'm the pastor of the church and they come to me and they share a problem it's really natural for me to go let's see how can we fix this literally i mean i you look up you used to be a police officer so i already know it's going to be about a ticket or you know someone's in trouble with the law and suddenly i go back into my information about what i know about the law and what i know about you know my experience with it and i want to fix their problems well i'm having trouble with my marriage i'm going to give you some marriage counseling right now we can fix this right here now it's not that i'm so prideful but that's just my natural way when becky has an issue i want to fix it well sometimes i want to fix it sometimes i don't want to fix it but if it's around the house it's like i'll get to it but that's my that's husband's nature we want to fix the problem we got to fix this i'm a fix-it guy macgyver but the need often isn't for fixing anything i can't tell you how many times i've started sharing with people ideas that i had about what they could do and they go can we just pray or something oh yeah i forgot we can pray that's why if you come to talk to me i'm going to hear to tell you i'm not going to solve your problems i will pray with you because we have a problem solver that knows exactly how to fix your problem and it's not me but this is so important when you have stress on your life you want to affirm lord i'm a bond servant i don't have to understand what you're doing to stand under what you're doing and i know you love me and so be i became your bond servant because you do love me that was my choice i've already resigned myself that i know you love me now i don't understand what you're doing but i know it's got to be good because you made promise to me that everything you do you're good you govern and you're working all things together for good i know those verses lord i need to believe those verses right now so i'm gonna have joy in your lordship that you're in charge of everything but i'm gonna talk to you about everything someone said the first aid in any emergency the spiritual first aid in any emergency is to stop what you're doing and to tell god everything i like that go to god you don't have to have solutions he's not asking you to come up with a solution rebecca in the old testament was barren couldn't have children so she goes to her husband she said i i want to have children and so her husband prayed for her and she became pregnant but then she had trouble in her pregnancy she couldn't figure out well if god answered the prayer miraculously i'm pregnant why am i having such difficulty in my pregnancy and then the bible says not her husband but she rebecca seeks the lord through prayer my husband prayed and god got me pregnant i know prayer is the answer so she goes to the lord in her trial god what's going on and you know what god said it was kind of like the first you know ultrasound ever done god says well there are two nations in your womb that are struggling with each other and she will that would that would answer it two nations i thought in other words you're gonna have twins and they're gonna be the fathers of two nations and god says this is basically a prophetic problem you're having you're gonna bear the children but there's something going on very interesting to me god actually tells her what's going on now let me tell you something trials are not given by god to reduce you to prayer but to induce you to pray not to say there's nothing i can do to help but pray about it as though prayer isn't powerful it should be our first response but it's to get you to pray and too often we have the trials but we don't pray we don't ask anybody to pray for us it's important that that many times is where god is trying to get us through the trial i want to see that you have faith to talk to me i want you to see you have faith to trust me i want you to see you have faith to bring your pain and your sorrows to be and then trust that i have something better than what you imagine going on in your life it's all about coming to the lord in prayer put this down pray in faith for divine wisdom now when this passage says if anyone lacks wisdom let him ask of god um the fact is he says don't be doubly minded in other words don't pray which is an expression of faith but not pray in faith what does that mean well we can go through the motions of praying and kind of like well that didn't work i prayed but nothing changed i feel the same so i did it check um i remember hearing of a woman whose husband was a pilot small plane like a cessna the man while they were flying had a heart attack and died at the helm i'm not kidding it was can you imagine she doesn't know how to fly a plane and so she gets on the radio she knew about the radio and she's she's not sure what to do and so she's he doesn't know how to land a plane or fly a plane i don't know if it was on cruise control or whatever autopilot but she had some time and she made a mayday she knew how to say that and literally she starts asking she's trying to describe what happened my husband has died i don't know how to fly a plane and she literally is going through the channels on the thing trying to find somebody on the ground to answer from the tower she never does get to anybody and she winds up thank god she crash lands the plane but she does land and she survives she she's a little injured but she's going to survive it was a tragedy obviously for her husband to die but the interesting thing to me was she was upset with the air traffic controllers she said i called for help you didn't answer they later told her actually we did answer but you kept changing the channel every time we heard you by the time we tried to acknowledge you evidently were so afraid you kept and i think sometimes we do that in prayer we cry out to god no that didn't work hey we just we just we start asking other people for help no no no that's not praying in faith some people's praying is just worrying on your knees that's not praying in faith praying in faith means you are trusting the promises of god and you are actively pursuing god in prayer because god wants to accomplish something through the prayer that he can't accomplish any other way and he's allowed these trials in your life to draw you closer to him it's a time of resolving that the lord is going to be lord whether or not it turns out the way you hope when is it that little samuel we often talk about this on wednesday night when is it that little samuel hears god speak for the first time when he prays this prayer speak lord your your bond servant is pr is i'm i'm listening as a bond servant meaning i just need to know what you want me to do i need to know whatever you want to tell me and i'll do it one other thing i'll say about wisdom the mistake would be thinking that every time i pray for wisdom god is going to do an you know ultrasound on my trial and show me why that's not what he promises in her case he shared why wisdom in the bible that god will give you 100 of the time is not why he's doing what he's doing listen to me it's proverbs the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom when you pray for wisdom what you're saying is lord i don't even need to know what you're up to i need to know what you want me to do how do i live the fear of god out in these circumstances these things that have happened that i don't like i want to honor you like job did when he lost his children i don't know what god's doing i don't know why god's doing it but i do know now what you want me to do you gave you take away your name is blessed lord this is my chance to have spiritual wisdom so you're praying for that and god promises that he will give it well pray in faith for divine wisdom is the final one but i want to just encourage you now to believe that if you're in a set of circumstances some of you are and you feel like well this is why i'm here today the lord wants to speak to me about the difficulties that i'm in and i particularly want to speak to those of you who are struggling with how long god has brought you into a set of circles maybe it's about a son or a daughter that are away from the lord i think those are some of the hardest trials that we ever deal with is a wayward prodigal son or daughter or grandchild or a marriage that isn't getting fixed or maybe it's of a healing in your life or some unfulfilled desire that you have that seems to just be perpetually there and you see in the scriptures how long god will make a promise until he fulfills it it feels like oh my am i going to have to wait another year another 10 years and how long lord you know the the martyrs in the tribulation in heaven are crying out how long lord holy and true does thou fail to avenge our blood and i think that's just the common nature of man lord i it feels like you're in no hurry and god says i'm not and so that's what i was afraid of you know i was hoping you were going to say something else let's have the worship team come i want to close with these words because i want to minister to your heart about waiting on the lord in your trial this is a song that's entitled he didn't bring us this far it says he didn't bring us this far to leave us he didn't teach us to swim to let us drown he didn't build his home in us to move away he didn't lift us up to let us down listen the lord will never bring you to anything he will not bring you through remember the promise in the old testament not just a shadrach meshach and abednego they just lived it out god said to his people when you go through the fire you're saying well i'm going through a fire yep when you go through the fire i'll be with you you won't get burned when you go through the waters the floods it's gonna flood oh yeah it's gonna flood you know when when god says i'm gonna go through a fire i i personally would rather him say i'm going to show up and put it out when you go through the fire i will rescue you out of it but here's what the bible says in first corinthians 10 13 the way of escape from our trial is to endure it say what he says you're going to go through the fire not just be pulled out of it but good news you're not going through it alone i will be with you though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i don't fear not because i'm getting helicoptered out because you're with me that's all i need to know job at the end of the book and we'll close stan watch the stand right now it'll help you to believe i mean it job at the end of the book who doesn't understand all the losses that he has and says i wish i could ask god why at the end of the book god shows up and all of a sudden job says i don't really need to ask god anything i just needed to know that he's here can i tell you something what you need is not the why of what god is doing or when he's going to end the trial what you need to know is he's here that he's with you and he's in charge amen let's sing together there is no other name but the name that is [Music] i know i will never be alone [Applause] i know i will never be alone there'll be another in the fire standing next to me but be another [Music] as a prisoner [Music] [Applause] [Applause] cause i know that's where you'll be accountable [Music] man came in at the end of the service and he said to somebody in the back row at the conclusion like now he said so is it all done he said is it all done no it's all just been said now it's our turn to go out and do it faith works you need and i need to apply this passage to our life right now the trials were in the trials we're yet to face remember what we talked about today see yourself as a servant of god you've resolved that he is your lord and he loves you then remember he's sovereign he's allowed things to happen for a reason and there's purpose in it though you may not see it yet and then just decide you're going to rest in his sovereignty and his wisdom and in his timing and god can give you a joy in his lordship in the midst of it and your faith will grow because you went through it some of you your last time here this morning is actually in our prayer room because you feel like i need to give that to the lord or maybe i need to give myself completely to the lord and trust that his presence is enough to get me through this trial because it is if that's all you need right now you need that for sure so maybe go and talk to the lord about what's going on our prayer and when people would love to pray with you finally guys men's retreat there's a flyer in your bulletin it's time we're going up in just a couple of weeks we need you to sign up so we can order shirts for you it's really important so it's time children's ministry wants to hear from those of you that will serve guys we want to do this one last thing and that's baptism that's next week if you have not signed up to be baptized we want to baptize you use the app for that you say why should i be baptized well if you're a christian jesus commanded that you be baptized so we would be honored to do that invite your friends your family to come out dads if your child is going to be baptized i love you in the water to baptize them you're welcome to do that a lot going on here this fall but good things may god bless you and keep you this week in jesus name god bless [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] there were walls between us by the cross who came [Music] you call me out of the grave you call me into the light you call my name and then my heart came alive your love is greater your love is stronger your love awakens awakens awakens your love is greater your love is stronger [Applause] [Music] i feel the darkness shaking all the dead i'm coming back to life back to life [Music] you [Music] [Applause] is [Music] can't hold us down [Music] cause you're alive your love is greater your love is stronger your love awakens awakens awakens is [Applause] [Music] your love is greater your love is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] amen you guys are happy to be in the house of the lord and focus on him forget about the darkness around us in this world and just speak the name of jesus we're gonna speak and sing the name the enemy fears amen [Music] it amen to peace the storm surrounding me let it break at your name still cold the sea [Music] jesus jesus you make the darkness tremble oh jesus jesus your silence fear jesus jesus you make the darkness tremble jesus jesus [Music] breathe pull these bones to live i call these lungs to sing oh i will praise jesus jesus you make the darkness [Music] your silence fear jesus jesus yes you make the darkness jesus [Music] jesus make the darkness [Applause] [Music] you make the darkness [Music] [Music] your name cannot be overcome forever [Music] [Applause] you make the darkness tremble jesus jesus for your silence kill jesus jesus cause you make the darkness [Applause] [Music] jesus jesus [Music] oh jesus jesus [Music] [Music] oh your name is [Music] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Music] oh jesus jesus [Music] oh jesus [Music] jesus will you make the darkness [Music] [Applause] [Music] bring light [Music] every heart that is [Music] so when we pour out our praise we pour out our praises [Music] [Music] you are loved you bring light to the darkness you give up you restore every heart is broken [Music] great are you lord in all of us [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] we pour [Music] us [Music] [Music] all the earth will shine yours our hearts will cry these bones will sing [Music] and all the earth will shine [Music] come on last time [Music] our hearts will cry these bones will sink is [Music] [Music] oh [Music] are you [Music] it's good to sing of his greatness even when things don't always feel great right he's worthy to be praised even the rocks would cry out if we were not to sing he doesn't need us to prove his greatness he doesn't even need us to make light of his greatness but he allows us to focus on the fact that we serve a great god and then from that outflows praise not because just be you know it's worth it to sing to god but he's just worthy of our praise amen and so we want to worship him from that standpoint not just from what are we going to get out of it no we want to give everything to glorify him and then allow him to speak to our hearts and change the way that we think all these things that we we do when we gather we don't want to do it out of ritual or just repetition we want to do it out of remembrance of who he is amen he is the living god he is greatly to be praised and so i'm excited to worship him here this morning and so we're going to transition now into some of offering and so if you're watching online or if you're in the room here on the bottom of your screen there's a link that'll pop up in which we use to facilitate giving through calorie chapel we also have an app in the app store uh the calvary chapel east anaheim app which you can download it works for giving but also works to sign up for things like uh we have this kingdom hearts study that's starting this week it starts on tuesday and there's people gathering in homes all over southern california really to study together and then to grow deeper and fellowship together and so if you're looking for something like that hey i want like a smaller group setting you can hit the app or go to our website and sign up to be a part of a group or even host a group if you're interested in doing that and so that's just something we want to make available to you and also you can put prayer requests in our app and just there's a lot of things you could do to help get plugged in if you're new here you can let us know that you're new we have newcomers dinners periodically in which we invite people to come and have dinner with the pastors and stuff because we don't want this to be a weekly thing we want this to be an ongoing relationship that you have with your family and so we want you to be able to come to this place and not only see it as a sunday morning event but something that is more of a family gathering in which you carry out through all your week because we need to have this time together on sundays but we also need to be able to bear one another's burdens stir one another to good works there's a lot of things that we can do to do that and so we want to facilitate as much of that as possible for you and so one place you might want to go is gathered japanese anaheim at but we're going to sing to the lord right out of james chapter one which is just so happens we're starting the book of james here this morning and so it's going to be a really great time studying through god's word and so why don't we commit our time to the lord and then we'll continue to sing lord we're thankful to be here we're grateful that you would even meet us here and uh allow us the opportunity and the privilege to sing your praises you could have required a lot of different things from us to worship you but lord you came close you're not a far away god you're god with us and so you're moving in our midst and we want to be aware of that so help us to be aware of your presence here this morning but also to respond to your presence here this morning that we're two or more gathered in your name you're here in our midst and so we want to put our focus our attention our affection and our intention toward you your presence in order to glorify you in this place and then the things of of our life our trouble our dark areas of our life will grow so much smaller as you increase in here so we love you we thank you in jesus name amen [Music] there's a grace where the heart is [Music] there was another [Music] holding back the season [Music] [Music] there is another fire [Music] [Music] i'm no longer a slave [Music] should i fall in the space between the world and raising me and it's ready [Music] [Applause] i know i will never be alone there is another in the fire standing next to me there [Applause] [Music] set me free there is a grave that holds nobody now the power lives in me there is [Music] there another another [Applause] [Music] [Applause] was and nothing stays between us nothing between us [Applause] [Music] there is [Applause] [Music] [Music] between all the things you and this reckoning i know i will never be alone i know [Music] the seas [Music] [Applause] [Music] cause i know that's where you'll be [Music] [Music] nothing's down between there'll be another in the fire standing next to me there'll be another in the water pouring back the sea [Applause] [Music] cause i know that's where you'll [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] cause i know that's where [Music] and so lord i pray for those in this room that are maybe in the midst of a battle a midst of a storm a fire so to speak lord that your presence will be felt what the perspective will be given or that as we read in your word as we're just saying to consider it joy lord that your you would be our joy the joy of our salvation um a joy that it supersedes just momentary feelings of happiness but a fullness of joy and so we love you we thank you in jesus name amen you guys can grab a seat here at ccea we are called to know grow serve and share me and my wife we decided to serve by serving in the four and five-year-olds in our children's ministry it has been such a blessing we serve once a month there's opportunities to serve once a week once every other week or once a month we decided once a month was good for us good for our schedule to help out in any way that we could and it's been such a blessing to serve your kids serve god's children and we just encourage you if you have one one week one weekend one one sunday a month we ask that you would join us in there it's such an awesome privilege to do so and these kids love us we love them we know them by name it's been such a blessing we hope you will get involved and serve in our children's ministry amen well for those of you that don't know that was my son valor and him his wife stacy and he are serving in our children's ministry as is my wife and let me introduce you if you don't know this is my youngest son christian company who's married to our children's ministry director haley and he wanted to share a word with us today about an opportunity so yes i have the privilege of uh representing our adventure kids team today and we are kicking off a fall season and for the first time we are inviting you to participate um as we start just a 16-week season it's going to go from now until christmas and uh we're looking for people that might be willing to serve once a month every other week or even weekly um but i know when an announcement like this goes out so oh i do want to mention so our sunday morning program is called gospel project and we go through the bible in three years and we just started back at the beginning today we are in the creation this morning and so it's really neat because the the curriculum will tie back every story that we go through and it ties it back into the gospel we really want your kids to walk away here knowing not only that there is a god but that they are loved by that god and that they can experience forgiveness through the gospel so it's a really awesome program but i know what happens when we make an announcement like this because i used to be in this same the same boat where it's like you know what that's great but i just really don't know if i feel comfortable working with kids you know i had kids i did that already or it's just not for me not my cup of tea well i want to share with you something that's happened to me and how god's kind of been working in my heart the last couple months around this area of you know it's just not comfortable well two months ago i had the privilege i was invited actually to go up and spend the day with our pastors they were doing a retreat up at a retreat center in arrowhead area and you know i was privileged just to be invited i'm not a pastor i said you know i want to go i just want to listen to these guys as they share from god's word and they talk about what's going on in the ministry maybe some issues they're having in the ministry um praise reports that are going on so it's just a privilege for me to be up there well i don't know what led to it but after one of the sessions pastor josh our youth pastor came to me and he said hey bro would you please come up and share your testimony with our youth students and i i froze and inside i'm like in terror right because i know what that means i know that means that i'm gonna have to go up and speak in front of like 70 high school students not once but twice on a sunday morning and it's not just a couple minutes like i'm doing right now it's literally going to be a 20 25 minute thing and i'm terrified and i'm screaming in my heart of hearts i'm going no no no no no but what came out of my mouth was of course yeah bro i could do that because what i realized is i have so much respect for josh as a pastor and i realized that if he was asking me that god had put it on his heart right got to put it on his heart so who am i to say no to the lord as uncomfortable as i knew it was going to be for me and the preparation and even in doing it i said yes and last week i had the privilege of sharing my testimony with the kids up there and um second service you know josh came up to me said hey hey why don't you share why don't you give the kids an opportunity to make a decision to to to recommit their life to the lord or to give their life to the lord for the first time we talked about being born again and so i did and and praise the lord six hands went up at the end of second service yesterday and i watched as this one girl in particular i saw her i could see her eyes welling up and her heart stirred and god was working in her heart and she went and she prayed with her leader afterwards and it was so i was so encouraged that as uncomfortable as i was that god could use even me to change hearts and change lives for eternity so i want to encourage you with that if your initial reaction to hey do you want to come serve our children is you know what not really my cup of tea st take a step of faith go out of your comfort zone you know what give us once a month for the next four months if after that you decide you know what it's really clear god's closing this door it's not for me still then that's fine but i want you to take a step just like i did i think god's gonna use that one other thing i want to say i'm taking way too much time but that's okay i know the guy i know a guy um so recently we've kind of wanted to reemphasize hey we we care about your kids you know we've got wonderful uh employees that are leading that area my wife is one of them so of course i'm a little biased but we also said hey we want to we want to redo the children's ministry area i'm sure some of you have seen we put some stuff up on the wall it's really cool you know what it says to the kids as they walk in is hey i matter you know this place is intentionally made for me and i they like that you know we all like getting attention right and hey this is kind of cool it's made for me well there's one thing that we can't do we cannot give the kids your time your time is probably the most valuable thing that you can give that a kid can receive in the world we live in we are obsessed with technology and self-serving whatever is in front of us it's all about me me me me me these kids are not getting outside of their family probably a lot of attention from adults they're not getting love care affection from adults probably more so exaggerated than any other time in in the history of our culture so what you're saying when you take the time to spend with these kids is hey you matter and guess what you are their family we are the family of god and so i want every kid that goes through our program to to walk out of here go out into the world and realize down the road man i had a church family that really cared for me that really loved me in a way that i'm never experiencing in the world and i believe that's going to happen so we have a qr code up on the screen i'll give you 20 seconds pull out your phone it's an excuse to pull out your phone check your text messages you know snap a selfie whatever you want to do i know we all like to get our phones out this is going to take you 30 seconds to fill out to say you're interested in serving once a month would be the minimum commitment for the next four months if you'd like to do bi-weekly we the more the more frequent frequent you can do the better but once a month would be the minimum commitment we're asking for um we have some spots to fill you guys i know that we will fill them and i know that god will fill them with the right people so thank you so much for your time god bless you we love you thank you super important i've been sharing on wednesday nights that you know we want people to come on wednesday night to study the bible in the old testament we call it the next steps so if you've never come on wednesday that's a time that's the next thing we'd like you to do but whoever you are and whatever state of fellowship you are with us as a church i can tell you this if you are going to grow to maturity it's going to involve more than just being in the word of god and gathering with god's people for worship it's going to involve you serving using your gifts and discovering your gifts and making yourself available so take advantage of this opportunity to serve in the children's ministry i think god's going to provide an incredible army of volunteers and do a new work among us but i hope you're part of that a couple of other things coming up the school of discipleship begins next sunday so if you happen to sign up it's time in fact several of these announcements i'm going to make right now are is like it's time to do this and uh you you'll be starting school next sunday so you'll want to sign up so that you can get your textbook uh or if you're going to do monday nights with don stewart sign up on our app and if you're not sure what we're t what we're having available go on the app uh and uh fill out that form and then uh cross current which we've been talking about which is a ministry for those eight week ministry for those that have an area in your life regarding your sexuality that you feel like is not resolved not not really healed or something that you want help with uh it can be same-sex attraction it could be gender dysphoria it could be just uh that there was sexual abuse in your past or there's something about this area it could be pornography we can't even list all the different areas but if there's this is a an area of your life you feel like i'm a christian but i don't feel like i'm honoring god from my sexuality and i want to where i want to get healing this is for you and it starts uh right away so we want you to sign up for it starts actually september 9th so that's why it's so important that you get signed up today that's on the app as well cross current eight week program and then next saturday this is the last sunday to tell you there's a conference it's you can come to this without joining cross-current but it's called hope in an identity crisis loving the sexually broken maybe you're a minister you have a son or a daughter or a friend and you feel like i need help i need to get equipped to know how to minister to them where that's you it's going to be from 9am to 1pm here in the sanctuary it's free bring a friend bring a loved one to it it's going to be amazing joe dallas is coming to speak and he's excellent i've heard him speak many times read his books you'll enjoy it and then real briefly i i know you guys got well guys and gals got a flyer on the men's retreat that's coming up we need you to sign up men right away so we have shirts ordered for every guy that wants to go so please don't put that off till the very end uh we're looking forward to being up in the mountains together with garrett bieler and also bob gascon's going to be teaching and uh chad williams the navy seal it's going to be an incredible weekend we want you there wives encourage your husbands to go we get one weekend an entire year just to be with the men and god does things that he only does i believe when we show up together so we want them to be part of that and then just a couple of other things briefly next sunday is our baptism and a lot of you have signed up but some of you maybe are wondering should i get baptized the answer would be if you're a christian yes christ commands us to be baptized it is a great privilege so if you haven't signed up use the app for that so we can send you that little study and be prepared next sunday after service starting at one o'clock we're gonna do the baptism right out in the courtyard but you'll want to be ready let us know that you're coming so we can send that out to you and then if you haven't already voted in this recall let me encourage you you know as a pastor i believe every christian should be a good citizen of the country we're not just a good citizen of heaven but we're to represent the lord and vote our conscience in any election and this recall in california is an opportunity for you to say basically it's not a complicated ballot yes or no yes i would like to see the current governor recalled or no i don't that's pretty easy if you do say yes yes then you have 36 other choices on that ballot you got to choose one so that's up to you vote your conscience on that but it's important that you realize that this is an opera you go well you know i've been looking at the polls and it doesn't look like you know we could recall them and they don't think it's worth listen what did that what did that hockey player say i missed 100 percent of the shots i never took you miss out on a chance to represent the lord a hundred percent of the ballots you don't cast it's not about winning the election in terms of what you think you'd like to see happen it's about honoring the lord with the privilege you have as being a citizen in the united states and in california please take advantage be part of the recall before the window is closed and last thing i want to say is there's a praise report this came this last week don't know if you heard about it but you should celebrate with us for those churches that were having government overreach that shut them down like john macarthur's church like don mcclure's son's church they uh they not only won their case they they were ordered the government was ordered to pay 800 000 in attorney's fees and i think a punitive because the government went too far we said amen we're thankful that's an answer to prayer all right now get to the book of james we're finally there starting a new book the book of james is of course probably one of the in a way the simplest books of the new testament in that it is really very practical very pithy advice it's been called the new testament book of proverbs where we're going to discuss different topics but from a very practical standpoint the application is very easy it's not deep theology although it touches on deep theology we just came out of the book of hebrews which was one of the deepest theological books in the bible and we come down to one of the most practical books in the bible but we're in chapter one beginning in verse one so turn your bibles there james 1 1 james and here's how he describes himself a bond servant of god and a bondservant of the lord jesus christ and i'm writing to the 12 tribes who are dispersed abroad greetings consider it all joy my brethren when you encounter various trials knowing the testing of your faith produces endurance let endurance have its perfect results so that you may be perfect complete and lacking in nothing but if any of you lacks wisdom which would be just about every person in this room from time to time let him ask of god who gives to all men or all people generously without reproach and it will be given him that's the promise but we must ask in faith without any doubting for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind that man ought not to expect he'll receive anything from the lord being a double-minded man unstable in all his ways father we want to dedicate not just this morning to you but our entire study of this book would you increase our faith would you give us the equipment we need to navigate the difficult times we go through the decisions we're going to make the relationships we're in we thank you that you have given us everything that we need for life and godliness in christ and in your word so we dedicate ourselves to be listening unto obedience teach us speak to us and we'll obey you in jesus name amen you can be seated welcome to anybody here who's here for the first time we're glad you've joined us for those that are online we miss you hope that we can see you soon in person if you're local so here we go into a new book the book of hebrews the theme was the supremacy the superiority of jesus christ he is better telling those new testament jewish christians he is better than the rituals of the old testament he is the completed revelation of god and the theology that backs that up all through the old testament and the sacrificial system we study here it's going to be all about how do i live out my faith in fact if there were two words that we could summarize the whole book with it would be this faith works faith works that faith and works faith works faith demonstrates itself you know the reformers when i speak of that i hope you know what i mean the those who we call the leaders of the protestant reformation taught that the bible teaches justification by faith alone we are justified we are declared righteous by faith alone we don't give works it's not faith plus works that make us acceptable to god but they were very clear that while faith alone saves saving faith is never alone meaning there's always a result to it if you really truly believe there's evidence that's why jesus will say to many of the day of judgment depart from me you workers of iniquity yes you have the right theology you call me lord yeah you were involved with my people and involved in ministry and you went to church but i know that i never really knew you there was no transformation of your life it was all superficial there's no real evidence that you were mine because of the way that you actually lived in your secret life so here we want to start out by recognizing just because we're christians does not mean that somehow when we got born again we were immune from normal everyday problems we are still subject to all the laws of physics the law of gravity we're subject to murphy's law if you know what that is never mind somebody wrote this a friend of mine awoke one morning to find a puddle of water in the middle of his king-sized water bed in order to fix the puncture he rolled the heavy mattress outdoors filled it with more water so he could locate the leak more easily the enormous bag of water was impossible to control it began rolling down the hilly terrain he tried to hold it back but it hit it downhill and it landed in a clump of bushes which poked it full of more holes disgusted he threw out the waterbed a frame and he moved in a standard bed into his room the next morning he awoke to find a puddle of water in the middle of the new bed the upstairs bathroom had a leaky drain maybe you can relate to that where you think you're fixing something only to find out you're not fixing anything well my point is this the scriptures and a key one on trials and temptation is first corinthians 10 13 we'll get there a little bit later in my message but i just want to quote it because there's a part of it that you need to hear there paul says no temptation by the way the word temptation in greek is also the word for trial did you know that it's the same thing the idea is as a believer a temptation is a trial and a trial is a temptation okay no trial no temptation has overtaken you but such as is what are the next words common to man in other words as believers we go through the same things we did before we were believers we still get sick we still get into car accidents or get tickets we lose jobs we have trouble sometimes in our marriages and trouble with our children we can lose loved ones before our expected time for them we get old we have to struggle with aging and we have to face death everything that we would go through as a non-christian we still go through and yet god wants us to have a completely different perspective than we ever did as unbelievers just because we became a believer does not mean we honor god in our trials the reality is you are either in a trial or coming up on one you say thanks i really appreciate that reminder bob jesus said in the world you will have tribulation in the world listen you're in the world you're gonna have tribulation when you go through a difficult time you say jesus said there would be days like this there'd be days like this why jesus said okay that's just that's part of living it's gonna happen the difference is for a believer while i'll say we'll use the word problems because we can relate to it a christian needs to change their perspective on problems we have trials we have tests the world has problems the world has chance things that happen to them we actually do not we have a ever loving savior who's in charge of everything that happens in our life i like the old hymn that says every joy or trial falleth from above traced upon our dial by the god of love i love that put this down let your faith form your self-perception i've entitled my message faith under fire because we're going to talk about how god uses trials in our lives but we're also going to talk about god's method for coming through a trial victoriously and some of you are going to say that's how i do it others are going to go that's how i should be doing it or that's how i want to do it next time but put in the word perception and i start this passage in verse 1 because of the way james describes himself listen to what he says james i am a bond servant of god and of the lord jesus christ now it's interesting james does not call himself a saint though he is saint james he is a saint it's interesting most people aren't running around calling themselves saints in the bible other people are calling themselves saints but he instead calls himself a servant or a bond servant by the way this greek word is the word doulas it's used all throughout the new testament it comes from a verb in greek de o which means literally to bind a dulos is not just a slave or a hired servant it is a bond servant and that's extremely important to understand it's his perception of himself that's going to affect the way that he handles trials you know when it comes to prayer jesus said when you pray pray like this you know the prayer our father who art in heaven there are two elements to prayer you and i it should incite us and encourage us to pray the first has to do with god's affection for you the way you see yourself i'm talking to my heavenly father i'm a child of god i believe he loves me secondly he's in the heavens the bible says our god is in the heavens he does whatever he pleases his affection for me motivates me to prayer and his authority over my whole world gives me peace that he can do whatever he wants amen that's where we start you know um if you don't see yourself as the object of god's love you're already starting out if you pray at all in the wrong place a lack of faith you need to believe god loves you and you're his child if you're a christian you are and that he wants to bless you wants to listen to you last night i was with my grandson he's four and a half his name is jeffrey i guess you didn't know that anyway he wanted me to stay at his dad's house longer we'd already been there quite a while and i said it's time for me and grandma to go home and he said no no no just stay longer stay a little longer i said i can't it's time it's early in the evening when i got to get home we have church tomorrow and i said besides i want to go home and have a cup of coffee and he said daddy has coffee i said yeah but i don't like his coffee i only drink dunkin donuts i'm going home for my coffee and i said besides i've got a special cup that i use at home he goes we got a cup with a picture of me on it he's negotiating with me and he realizes i love him so much i'd much rather drink my coffee out of a cup with him on it and he's right you see he's asking me questions based on the relationship well the relationship should first involve that i know i'm loved i know that i'm being heard by god he's listening to me but then how do i see myself i see my god as my father but do i see myself as his servant no his bond servant this is really important you understand this when the new testament writers use the term servant or bondservant they don't just mean a slave that has been bought and paid for because the world of slavery in the ancient world most people were slaves there were millions of slaves in the roman empire okay almost as many as citizens in the roman empire there were just lots of people that were bought and paid for had no authority or will or hopes for their life to ever be something that they could determine on their own but the term used in the new testament is not about that person who has been sold against their will say what do you mean well in the old testament god gave some laws regarding slavery he said i don't want my people to be slaves but if they get so poor and have to sell themselves as slaves they can only be a slave for seven years at the end of seven years you must release them or the year of jubilee if it comes in between they must be released it's only temporary to get out of debt it's very interesting then he gave a law that's very interesting on top of that he says besides all that if it should happen in other words it should happen that a slave should say you know what i know it's my time to go free but my master loves me so much and he takes care of me so well he does a better job with my life than i could ever do on my own i don't want to go free i voluntarily choose this day even though it's my time to go i am dedicating the rest of my life to my master i am going to become a bond servant whenever you read the term bond servant you need to realize this is a person who because they have been so loved by their master has voluntarily said you get the rest of my life i don't want to have my freedom anymore to do what i want i only want to do what you want jot down john 15 15 interesting because of what jesus says to his disciples he says this no longer do i call you slaves that's the same greek we're doulas bonds earth no longer do i call you slaves or servants for the slave does not know what his master is doing we'll come back to that later but i have called you friends for all things that i have heard from my father i have made known to you very interesting why jesus says i know you considered yourself and i did too my servants but i'm not going to call you that anymore you're not my servants you're my friends and yet the very people he was speaking to every one of them writes in the new testament i'm a bond servant maybe you don't call me that jesus but that's the way i see myself i know you call me friend i know you call me saint but i see myself as your bond servant so it starts out if we're gonna have victory in our trials how do you see yourself this area deals with the issue of consecration you coming as a believer born again to that point in your life if you haven't where you say i want to be sold out to the lord i don't want just jesus along for the ride he's my co-pilot or i'm his co-pilot can tell you if that's the way you're living your christian life you have missed out on all that god has for you and you're gonna struggle because your pilot or your co-pilot isn't running things the way he should in your opinion you've got to come to a place of release and resign now put this down letter b let your faith flourish in spite of your problems in verse 2 we have this command consider it all joy my brethren when you encounter various trials now our natural reaction to that is well that's just weird i mean yeah i hear it i read it i wish i could do it but that's just not going to come naturally oh i got a big problem let's go celebrate that just seems weird i want to break this down let's understand what he's saying and what he's not first of all put this down see joy is a choice based on a personal consideration joy is a choice why because the first word is consider and it's a mental word it's not a feeling word he's not even talking about your feelings he says whenever you encounter king james says fall into and by the way that's probably a better translation of the greek the greek word encounter or fall into is actually peripto which means to fall into a problem where you're surrounded as a cop we used to talk about getting into situations where we were up to our ears and alligators in other words it's just falling apart if you're overwhelmed we would say that's what he's saying when you're in that situation you need to see the fact that you can have joy but it's not going to come naturally it's gonna come based on a mental decision so here's a statement you can jot it down if you want joy is not a feeling based on circumstances it's a reasoned reaction based on facts let me say it again joy that we're commanded to have to rejoice in is not a feeling based on circumstances but a reason reaction based on facts how do we know that because paul the apostle who had lived it there in philippi and now was writing to the philippians and he's in prison again in rome says these words in philippians 4 4 and you know it rejoice in the lord don't miss that part because you'll never do it otherwise rejoice in the lord always and again i say rejoice he is not on vacation when he said it he's facing incarceration and he had already lived it when he first went to philippi he was in you remember the story it's acts 16 him and silas are thrown into prison they've been beaten and what are they doing it says they're praying and praising and singing to the lord it's like what yeah he's rejoicing in the lord in the midst of his trial he's doing it and then later on he writes to that church and says it's your turn i'm doing it over here in rome now i'm in prison i'm still doing it these are people that aren't in prison he's saying if i can do it you can do it reach now i have to admit i kind of wonder what was what was going on with paul i mean that's not real natural he's bleeding he's you know most people are angry they're bitter or they're silent or whatever in prison you ever talk to people in prison i put them there i know they don't like me they don't like anybody and everybody else is to blame paul and silas are just literally praising the lord i sometimes wonder what song were they singing rejoice in the lord always and again i say rejoice come on everybody just the felons this time i don't know if they were trying to do that but the it's bizarre and it got everybody's attention for sure but the fact is paul had lived out what we are now studying in the book of james it was a choice that he could make and that you can make now keep this in mind he's not telling you in philippians 4 4 rejoice in your losses he says rejoice in the lord that's where the rejoicing comes from your mind my lord is in charge of all what happens to us sometimes as christians when we go through hard times is we seem to forget that our savior is the ceo of the universe nothing has happened except he's decided it's only going to stay as long as it should and it has purpose for our lives jot down first chronicles 29 11. send the prayer of david he says thine o lord is the greatness the power the glory the victory the majesty indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth thine is the rule the dominion oh lord and thou just exalt thyself as head over all so that's why when isaiah knows that the king is dead chapter six and when a king dies everything is up for grabs we're vulnerable time of vulnerability but while the king has died he sees the lord high and lifted up and sitting on his throne the throne in heaven is still occupied that's why john on the island of patmos not where he wants to be he was a pastor he wanted to be with god's people in ministering but he's on the island of patmos he's going to be in exile probably till he dies at least that's possible that's what it seems like is going to happen but he has a vision go back and read revelation 4 and 5. what is it he sees when he's caught up to heaven a throne and by the way it's occupied by the lamb of god in other words i'm right where i need to be god has placed me here i can trust him i can rejoice in his lordship in the fact that he's in charge put this down trust your trials are divinely designed to fit you to fit you you have designer trials in verse 3 the joy is tied to this knowing the testing just underline the word your it's not the testing of faith generally it's the testing of your faith personally produces endurance faith chooses to see now listen to me faith chooses to see now what the flesh may only see in the rear view mirror later what do i mean by that well humanly speaking you can look back on times in your life that you didn't understand go oh look what god did through that well that was cool what he did now sometimes ago i'm not sure what it was but many times we can look back oh yeah thank you lord at the time i was miserable and sometimes i think that's what the extent of faith we ever need to have it's just to see in retrospect oh no walking by faith decides now that god is doing something good or working all things together for good because he has promised to always do that in our life it says my disappointment is his appointment i didn't want this i didn't prefer it but i know god is wiser than me it's joseph and mary who have had heard the good news which was also hard news hey mary's gonna get pregnant before you guys get married oh that sounds great uh you know i've always thought when mary was told that by gabriel she's thinking now are you gonna go tell my mom and dad that are you showing up with the rabbi and my friends down the street because if not i don't think they're going to like the fact that i'm pregnant out of wedlock and obviously he didn't show up right away because joseph's going to divorce her so clearly you didn't even tell my fiance but she's just trusting the lord and joseph who's met the woman of his dreams now is thinking about divorcing her i mean life was tough that was not the way they had planned to start their life together if that wasn't hard enough oh by the way some king in far away rome wants to tax the entire empire and everybody has to move right now while she's nine months pregnant 100 miles away that's easy now wasn't then very pregnant gonna have to move to bethlehem so that you can be counted so this guy can tax us and do you think joseph and mary are going micah 5 verse 2 the messiah must be born in bethlehem no problem lord no god doesn't gabriel doesn't mention the verse though in retrospect no doubt they realize this is exactly where our son needs to be born but at the time they just had a trust for our dreams to come true of all god said about giving us the son of god he has to be in charge of the things we don't understand you have joseph in the old testament talk about living with some abuse loved by his father not by his brothers they hated him they hated the fact that he was so loved by his father you remember this story they're going to kill him that's how much they hated him instead they go why kill him we can make a shekel so they sell him into slavery and he winds up in egypt of all places and he's a slave and dad is told oh he got eaten by a bear he got eaten by a wild animal and so his life is over the life that he had known before but remember he had had a dream a couple dreams dreams about his brothers bowing down to him and being given honor and he didn't really understand those dreams but he remembered him but here he is in egypt he's his brother's already been in his life anymore he doesn't think he'll ever see them again and it gets worse before it ever gets better there in egypt he is falsely accused by potiphar's wife and then after that he's thrown in prison and then in prison he helps some guys out he says just remember me when god delivers you out of the prison oh we will they completely forgot about him it just seems like things get worse and worse and worse for this guy by the way joseph is a type of christ if he's probably one of the characters in the old testament that more resembles jesus christ in his life in so many ways than anybody else falsely accused but he'll go from the pit to the palace in one day to the right hand see he's a type of christ but he doesn't know when he doesn't know how he doesn't know if he has these dreams they'll come true but it's going to be through many difficult times many trials that is the reality of our lives we will have trials we don't understand but the question is will we have faith when we go through them that he's in charge there's a passage of scripture i want you to jot down it's genesis 22 and verse 1. now it came about after these things that god tested abraham and said to abraham and he said here am i or here i am now genesis 22 1 is the pinnacle of the expression of abraham's faith the biggest trial he or probably anybody else has ever had in their life because it is in genesis 22 god says okay abraham i want you to take your son your only son your promised son that you had prayed for that all your hope is in fulfilling all your dreams to have descendants and i want you to take them up on this mountain place i'll show you and i want you to offer them up as a burnt sacrifice to me and abraham hears god say it doesn't say uh excuse me what was that uh how does that figure he didn't ask god anything he just is ready to do it and he goes to do it you remember the story of course god stops him before he does it's god who will give his only son not abraham but abraham was willing to do so and god wanted to see if he would be willing to do so listen to me the part of that verse that is usually overlooked is perhaps one of the most important parts of the verse can we put genesis 22 1 back on here's what it says it came about these next words are very important after these things say what does that mean after what things after everything else that had been happening in abraham's life from the day that he met the lord where god in ur of the chaldees said leave your family leave your friends leave your land and i'll take you to a land that i'm going to give you from that day to this day and there were decades god had been working at abraham's life this wasn't his first test by the way this test you're going through are about to go through it's not your first test if you're a christian god is getting you ready for every subsequent test of your life whether you feel you're ready or not oh ready for that kid he'll god says you can handle it he's not going to give you a pop quiz you can't handle he's not going to give you an examination he hasn't prepared you for though you may have never gone through this before abraham had never gone through that before he had other tests and by the way he didn't always do so well in the test remember god said leave the land and leave your family yes sir take dad with me and i'll take a lot with me my nephew that was kind of like in violation of leave your family behind go to the place that i'll show you he stops in haran never even gets to kanan for years till dad dies you go read it his faith was very weak very partial very compromised he gets to the promised land there's a famine lands what does the man of faith do go to egypt because egypt has bread i call egypt costco in the old testament it's like they have everything you could just go down there and get it but you don't have to trust the lord and abraham is learning step by step frankly failure by failure remember pharaoh is there and abraham's concerned my wife is so good-looking she's like 90 years old but you know pharaoh is going to look at her and go ah he said so he tells us his wife you know we're kind of related so just say i'm your brother we're brothers of the lord you know and just say i'm your brother and that way they won't kill me because it's all about me anyway right and uh okay and so she goes through with it vero taking remember that story he totally blows it he botches the test god's giving him tests and a lot of them he's failing but he's learning step by step that god is faithful you have learned that as well and he's going to give you tests that you are prepared for it will only come about after these things first corinthians 10 13 puts it this way we just had it on the on the screen or on your verses a minute ago no trial no temptation no test has ever overtaken you but such first of all is common to man and then this promise hey god's faithful he won't allow you to be tested or tempted beyond what you are able now he may test you in a way i couldn't handle he doesn't say i'll never give you a test that bob can't handle no no my tests are designer for me it's like that little boy who had the load of lumber or you know wood that he was carrying in from his dad's truck and the neighbor said son that's too much for you to carry he goes no it's not my father gave me the load he knows what i can carry you got a load capacity at this point in your life god knows it he created you that way he knows exactly where you're at and your confidence in your trial is that god is at work to give you just what you need to help you grow put this down number three our trials are preparatory and purposeful in verse three we can have joy in our trials knowing what that the testing of our faith it produces endurance there's something good that's going to come out of it i love chuck smith's autobiography in which he looks back on his whole life and he uses these words repeatedly in the book i realized everything in my life everything was preparation for something else everything i've ever gone through was preparation for something else jot down first peter 4 verses 12 and 13. peter says beloved don't be surprised at the fiery ordeal that comes among you which comes upon you for your testing as though some strange thing were happening to you but to the degree you share the sufferings of christ keep on rejoicing so that at the revelation of his glory you may rejoice with exaltation that's very interesting i don't know that we often test our ability to have joy here with our joy there he ties them together you want to have joy in heaven yeah well then you need to have joy now it's like well i'll just wait till i get to heaven that's not what he said he said you learn to rejoice now so that you can have that joy in his presence very interesting god uses suffering in this life through trials to both prove our faith what does that mean to reveal our faith and to improve our faith let me say that again god uses trials to prove the faith to demonstrate the faith that you have to say it they would take medals and they would put it under fire to prove that it was genuine true gold gets brighter under heat anything that's fake gets darker so they use metals to assay the quality of precious uh or heat to uh say the quality of precious metals like silver and gold deuteronomy 8 and verse 2 is a fascinating verse listen to what god says to his people he said you shall remember all the way which the lord your god has led you in the wilderness this is moses these 40 years that he might humble you testing you to know what was in your heart whether you would keep his commandments or not god says for 40 years the children of israel were being tested constantly tested in the trials that they've very interesting we're told in the book of exodus god brought his children out of egypt they come into the wilderness and there's no water to drink now god knows there's no water to drink but he wants to see well what are you going to do when there's no water to drink and the bible says they grumbled against moses he brought us out here to die of thirst that's what they do that's what immature faith does ah right and so god lets him come to a body of water hey there's water let's go only it's undrinkable it's brackish it's saltwater imagine how they felt they thought they found the answer the answer was you know it's the leaky waterbed folks it's it's not what we were thinking and god says he tested his people there what are you gonna do when it's not what you want what are you going to do when it gets worse than the first disappointment will you trust me still god is constantly asking you and me that question what will you do jesus gives remember the vampire sermon eat my br my uh body drink my blood you'll have no part in me and everybody walks away and jesus says to the 12 what about you guys what are you going to do now can i suggest to you for a moment in the trial you're in or the next one you come to hear god say do you trust me now will you what are you going to do now that didn't work out the way that you had hoped you see if you have a hose at home in your backyard and you have a nozzle on it you can go turn the pressure on before you do the hose looks fine you turn the pressure on and if there's any holes in the hose they show up the holes show up under pressure the pressure did not create the holes it just reveals the holes i like to tell it with with coffee you go into starbucks if you drink that stuff you go in there i know you have to milk it up and put all kinds of stuff in anyway you get your coffee in the morning you're late for work you put your coffee on you know in your cup holder and you zoom out of the starbucks and you forgot or didn't know there are new speed bumps that have been installed and your coffee because you didn't put the top on your coffee now displays itself on the hood liner the headliner of your car my question is did the bump create the coffee nope it revealed the coffee that's what trials do they don't create the angst in you that's a mistake that's like telling somebody else you make me so angry no it couldn't come out of you if it wasn't in there trials are designed to reveal their tests to reveal into where your faith is where your trust in god's word is and god allows them for that reason not so he can see it he knows your heart already but so that you can see it and deal with it it's interesting in the gospels we have two occasions where a father separately from this mother have a child that are demon-possessed and they go to jesus asking him to heal their daughter and their son respectively now the mother the syrophoenician woman comes and asks that her child could be set free it's a little girl from this demon and jesus because she pursues him says woman great is your faith and be it done unto you according to your faith and the daughter was healed but there's a man a father who brings his son to jesus who's up on a mountain praying at the time and he wants his son to be set free of this demon he says that from the time the boy was just a little boy he would often be self-destructive throw himself in the fire throw himself in the water that's exactly what satan wants to do he wants to kill your kids he wants to kill you if you're not a christian he wants you to end your life without ever being saved and so this man comes and he's just hoping that jesus might be able to help his son but jesus comes down from the mount of transfiguration and the disciples have tried to cast the demon out but they can't cast the demon out so jesus comes over casts the demon out and sends the man on his way it's very interesting to me when the disciples come to jesus why couldn't we cast out the demon here's what jesus said because of the littleness of your faith to the woman to the mother great is your faith but to jesus's own disciples your faith is too little that's why i couldn't use you your faith was not able to be used same problem two different families one sees that god is going to respond to their faith and do what they want the other one is not seeing anything ever change and it comes back to this issue of faith in their lives there's a famous poem by a woman named ella wheeler wilcox she was a christian poet about 100 years ago she said this one ship sails east one sails west by the self-same wind that blows for it's the set of the sails and not the gales that determine which way we go like the winds of the sea are the waves of time as we journey along through life tis the set of the soul that determines the goal and not the calm or the strife when it comes to the reality of how we go through life and trial it's the same storm it's the same circumstance it's the same trouble the question of what happens really isn't about the size of the storm it's about the set of the mindset the set of the soul you see it's a set of your faith and i think this poet ella wheeler absolutely nailed it poetically what james is preaching to us practically in our lives and what god's calling us to live out what will we do with the circumstance and what will the circumstance do to us um there's a a verse in job 23 will you jot down job 23 10 i like his perspective in the midst of his trials he makes this statement god knows the way that i take when he has tried me i shall come forth as not silver not bronze god's going for the gold in your life when he has tried me i will come forth as gold um the fact is trials many times we just would wish they'd go away and that's usually our prayer lord just take them away i don't want them to be in my life anymore but that's the wrong prayer because that suggests that they're a mistake that god didn't allow them to begin with that there's no good purpose at all except me praying and he'll just take me out of them there's a song that i've been listening to lately that i i call this song a sermon because i love the words i think they minister to me and i hope they will to you it's called blessings here's what the song says about prayer we pray for blessings we pray for peace comfort for the family protection while we sleep we pray for healing for prosperity we pray for your mighty hand to ease our sufferings but all the while you hear each spoken need yet love is way too much to give us lesser things because what if your blessings come through raindrops what if your healing comes through tears what if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know that you're near what if trials of this life are your mercies in disguise we pray for wisdom your voice to hear we cry in anger when we cannot feel you near we doubt your goodness we doubt your love as if every promise from your word is not enough and all the while you hear each desperate plea and long that we have faith to believe when friends betray us when darkness seems to win we know that pain reminds this heart that this is not our home what if my greatest disappointments or the aching of this life is the revealing of a greater thirst this world cannot satisfy what if trials of this life the rain the storms the hardest nights are your mercies in disguise well i don't say what if i say absolutely this is exactly what scripture teaches us that his trials are preparatory and purposeful finally put this down we need not understand in other words what god's doing in our trial we need not understand to stand under our trials put in stand under verse 4 tells us the goal let endurance which verse 3 says that's why we're being tested is to produce endurance let endurance have its perfect result so that we may be complete perfect lacking in nothing in other words god's trying to accomplish something that can only happen under a trial remember in john 15 we read it earlier jesus said no longer do i call you bond servants or servants but friends and then he said why he said for the servant does not know what his is masters doing and yet if you call yourself a bond servant which i hope you will you're saying i don't expect to understand what my master is doing the bond servant does not know meaning he doesn't understand he doesn't perceive he doesn't get it it's not the job of a bond servant to understand what his master's business is only to be submissive to his master's will i don't need to understand the why of what god is doing to understand the what god wants me to do endurance is the goal endurance is the key by the way this word in greek i want to mention it because it's a fascinating word to me the word to endure sometimes translated patience or perseverance in the new testament is a word that two greek words are put together it's the word hoop on meno hoopa is a preposition which means under we have it in hypodermic for instance which means under the skin which is where the needle goes hoopa under and meno a word that means to abide or to dwell or remain and in romans 9 it's translated to stand i don't have to understand to be able in faith to stand under what god allows so this idea that god's going to show me why he's doing it be careful with that on the one hand god can show you why you're going through the trials but he doesn't promise always to do that instead you need to know god's character he's your father who loves you he wouldn't put you through anything that wasn't good for you and he's going to use it to help you grow in ways that otherwise you can't you need to allow him to be lord somebody wrote it this way a clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot it has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain god is going to take you through just enough to be able to accomplish his purposes and nothing more someone has said a diamond is just a lump of coal that stayed on the job duration endurance put this down let your faith reveal itself in your prayers first it starts out i'm a bond servant my perception of myself is god you have the right to do whatever you want keep me in this life take me out of this life make my life a blessing and easier to live or harder to live you have purposes i don't know what they are but that's not my i'm no longer the one making decisions and opinions i'm just submitted to your will secondly lord i believe that you're in charge of this universe including mine everything you're deciding ahead of time and how long it'll be and i'm going to put my joy in your lordship but then we're told in verse 5 how to respond but if any of you lacks wisdom about your trial is the context if you lack wisdom ask of god who gives to all men generously and without reproach and it'll be given to him only ask in faith without doubting for the one who doubts well it's like the the sea it's driven tossed to and fro it's up and down that man ought to not expect he'll receive anything from the lord being a double-minded man unstable in all his ways put this down make prayer your first response to your trial not a last resort i think sometimes it's just hard for us i know i'm as a man as a father and as a husband as a pastor people will come to me with problems my wife will come to me with problems and my first natural inclination is i'm going to be mr macgyver to her you got a problem i can fix it i got google i can i could i'll call somebody i i'm gonna i'm gonna be the hero here you know and and the longer we're alive the more experience we've had and that that's good and bad the bad is we can think well i've done this before i know how to handle i know somebody and so it's just natural to want to fix people's problems and so that's also true when we go through trials there's got to be a fix here let's go find it and many times talking to the lord about it it's kind of the last thing we do like the well there's nothing to do now but pray about it you're trying everything else right no prayer needs to be our first response like that old saying you can do more than pray after you've prayed but until you've prayed you can't do more than pray the first aid in every spiritual emergency is to stop what you're doing and tell god everything about it that needs to be our first response and that's what he says you're going through a trial well know who you are you're his servant no god is he's in charge now in the midst of that talk to god about it make just go before the lord by the way the book of james has about 30 illusions or echoes of the teachings and the words of jesus very interesting and one of those of course that we've already studied in matthew is ask and keep asking jesus said ask and it will be given but you need to keep asking knock and don't stop knocking seek and keep seeking in other words i want to answer your prayers but you got to pray them for me to answer them and so this is an incitement to pray very interesting to me you have to kind of overcome that natural tendency of wanting to fix it and instead to pray that's why there are times over the years when people will come to me as a pastor and they'll say i've got this problem with this person or this situation and you know i start immediately thinking about you know or sometimes they'll come and say well i know you used to be a cop it's like okay you're in trouble with the law or you know you got a ticket or so you know they they come to me for my expertise and they're already feeling honored that i'm such a brilliant person in that area let's see and i'll go through my encyclopedia the problem is i have at times thought okay so i'm trying to share with them what i know and i'll go on and on and sometimes i'll go can we just pray you are a pastor you're not my lawyer you know and the fact is so i've learned that's why if you come to me with a problem i can already tell you what i'm going to do i'm going to pray with you that is the best thing i could do for you i really is not to offer my advice but to say let's ask god let's ask god to work because that is really what the scripture commands us to do not counsel each other to solve our trials but to pray and actually to pray for one another too this is where it needs to be it's interesting to me in scripture the times when people have situations and they go to god in prayer and god reveals things for instance in the old testament rebecca married to isaac is barren she can't have children and she wants children more than anything else she wants to bear a son and so she goes to her husband and he says i'll pray for you and he does and guess what god opens her womb in response to her husband's prayer she becomes pregnant wow miracle of god right absolutely but then the bible says she had a problem in her pregnancy i don't know exactly what it was but there was something not good in the pregnancy and she can't figure out if god has blessed me with the answer to my prayers why you know i don't know if i'm going to lose the kids or what's going on but something's wrong but this time she doesn't go to her husband she goes to the lord she inquires the lord my husband prayed last time now i'm going to go to that prayer thing worked and she asked god it's kind of like the very first evidence that we have in the bible of us a divine ultrasound because she doesn't know why she's having difficulty in her pregnancy but she figures god does and so god tells her the reason you're having difficulty is there are two nations in your womb two nations man yeah that would do it you know uh the head of two nations are gonna be born you saw the and and of course uh her son jacob and so you know it's very interesting the lord knows why you're going through what you're going through he knows exactly why you have no idea hey if anyone lacks wisdom let him ask of god who gives to all men generously but let me just say this while there are times god will show you why you're going through things and i've had the lord show me at times exactly after i prayed he told me why because sometimes you just keep going through the you know you have a makeup test next week if you don't get it this time i was like lord i'm i'm being tried i don't get it i kept having somebody steal my my stereo out of my car when i was 18 and i i couldn't i replaced it and it would be stolen again all my christian music would be stolen some thief out there that wants to get edified i don't know and they would steal my and i couldn't figure it out and i said i can't afford any more stereos lord can you just show me why why is this happening god said oh now that you're asking i'll be happy to tell you you spend way too much time listening to your christian music and you ignore the people that you give a ride to i want you to be with the people that are in your car i said okay lord i'm not going to buy another one for a while can't afford this lesson but he spoke to him he showed me why this was happening there are times like rebecca like me the lord will show you why but not always now listen to me don't misunderstand the promise if you lack wisdom about your trial we go well that means why i'm going through it maybe so what do you mean remember what biblical wisdom is proverbs chapter 1 the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom the fear of the lord is the beginning of knowledge what you and i are praying for when we're going through a trial isn't god you got to show me why i'm going through it god i'm asking you to give me the wisdom to go through it trusting you that's what praying for wisdom is whether you show me or not if you think that's good for me great if not i want to honor you and respect you and trust you through the trial that's what he promises to give you you may never know why in this life but you can know what you should do through your trial amen so it's important to understand we are to pray and what we are to pray for we're praying in faith for divine wisdom and by the way god gives wisdom to his children god speaks to his servants what does little samuel learn he has to say to hear god speak to him speak lord your isn't that interesting god's not going to speak to samuel at all until he learns to see himself as james i'm a servant god has no intention of speaking to somebody who doesn't see himself as committed to obeying him so you're saying god tell me what to do and then i'll pray about it think about it talk to my friends we'll vote on it no no no he don't expect he's going to say anything to you how do i know listen to me here's a principle in scripture consecration precedes revelation so what do you mean romans 12 says i urge you therefore brethren by the mercies of god present your bodies to god an acceptable sacrifice that's consecration i'm giving you my whole life don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you might prove the word means to discern or know the perfect will of god in other words do what you know and you'll know what to do do what god has commanded surrender your life to the lord god speaks to his servants who are sold out don't expect god to speak to you if you haven't resolved the fact that you're going to obey him well i'm trying to figure out if i want to then he's not ready to speak to you speak lord your bond servant is ready to hear from i'm listening to you it's so important that we start there and so god gives his servants wisdom the shepherd leads his sheep remember in john 10 i go before my sheep they're my sheep i love them they know me and and i lead them and the bible says in romans eight the father directs his children listen i don't discipline my neighbor's kids there are times i've been tempted uh but i don't if you're a child of god you get disciplined by the father if you don't have discipline you're not a child of god the bible says but in romans 8 one of the characteristics of being a child of god is they're led by the holy spirit the spirit of god's leading is for his children so prayer is not one more method to try to get our problem resolved that's the mistake of thinking well i've tried prayer that didn't work and let me close with this concept and i'm so glad we sang that song this morning god's plan for our trials and god's promise to you and me for our trials is not necessarily to get you out of the problem i know that's what we want but it's to get us through the problems see shadrach meshach and abednego which the song makes reference to was another in the fire walking next to me right there's another in the storm and the flood holding back the sea and we read that in the book of daniel that miracle of when these three were unwilling to bow down and they were cast in the fiery furnace and one like an under the son of god was there with them and he brought him through actually he didn't bring him out they didn't even come out until the king said come out they would have stayed in there with him they'd rather be in the fire with jesus than come out if the king has had come out our trials are like that but what happened to shadrach meshach and abednego isn't just a story in history because isaiah then later picks it up the spirit of god says tell my people when they go through the fire i'll be with them when they go through the flood it won't overwhelm them i'll be with them in other words what happened the shadrach meshach and ago in the fire it's going to happen again it's going to happen in your life you're going through the fire you're going through the flood you're going through the storm it's going to happen but listen you're gonna go through it god does not say see if god says bob you're gonna go into a fire and i'm gonna you're gonna make it through i don't wanna hear that i mean yes thank you that i'm not going to get burned to a crisp but what i really want to hear is you're going to show up with a fire hose i have a ladder and a helicopter and you're getting me out god says oh no no i have no intention of getting you out what no you're getting through you're going in what does david say yay though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i'll be rescued by the coast guard no i'm going through it but i'll fear no evil because you're with me can i tell you that's the key job wants to talk to god for chapter after chapter this isn't fair this isn't right my friends are out to lunch they're all accusing me i've done nothing wrong god this isn't fair i just want to talk to you come on show up god and god shows up and job says you know i don't really have anything to say right now i just just whatever you say because god has a few questions for the one who has so many questions like two chapters of them hey you're so smart job where were you when i created the world i don't remember you being there but you're speaking so eloquently about everything talk to you're so wise god uses sarcasm to humble job but the bottom line is this job does not need answers as to why it's happening what he needs is to know god's there and when god shows up he's fine can i tell you you don't need to know why you're going through what you're going through you need to know that you're not alone that god is going with you he will never bring you to what he will not bring you through but there's a work that happens as you go through it with him that you need and can celebrate that he's accomplishing let's have the worship team come i want to lead us in prayer father we can study this in the life of old testament saints like abraham and like rebecca like shadrach meshach and abednego lord we can see it in their lives we can hear james speak about it and paul who trusted you in his trials but lord they're all gone and this isn't a movie about somebody else's great faith this is your invitation to us in this room and us who are watching this message it's our turn it's our chance to run this race with endurance lord for us to see ourselves as your servants and to resolve that you have a will that we don't understand but it's okay because we trust you lord to know that you're sovereign over our circumstances and nothing has happened except that you've allowed it for our good will rejoice in your lordship and then lord just to rest right now in the fact that you're with us and you'll never leave us help us to count your presence your wisdom more than enough we don't want the trial to be over before you do everything you plan to do for us and for us to bring you glory and be able to minister to others so we accept what you've allowed we rejoice in your lordship in jesus name amen let's all stand and sing that together [Music] there is [Music] [Music] between all the things [Music] [Music] [Music] standing next to me but [Applause] [Music] [Applause] in the darkness as the darkness passed standing next to me [Music] [Music] cause i know that's where you'll be [Applause] cause i know that's where you'll be [Music] heard a story of a man that came into the back of the sanctuary right about now in a service and the guy said to the man in the back girlfriend of us he said is it all done he said all done no it's only all been said now's the time where we got to go do it faith works it doesn't just believe the things we've said it actually has to live them out and maybe you're saying i know what god's telling me to do then go do it but maybe you're struggling with i don't know how i can do this i know i need to i need to make some changes and my attitude towards the lord toward i don't have joy in his lordship i don't understand that i want to our prayer room is wide open to help you make that decision to say i want to be consecrated i want to be surrendered to him i don't know how to do more than i've done but i'm willing if there's some part of me i've held back it's time to release it to him it starts in verse 1 and it starts with seeing yourself as his bond servant may the lord bless you may he keep and protect you may he lift up his countenance upon you and give you his peace in the name of the father and the son and the holy ghost god bless you [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Calvary Chapel East Anaheim

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Length: 219min 35sec (13175 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021